in between the moon and you (angels get a better view)
by diaghileafs
Summary: 'Yes, Jesse says to himself, you do get more romantic when you're dying. This would never make it to TV, okay, maybe ABC.' Becky is surprised when she finds out that her fiancé has been keeping two secrets from her; one that's seemingly in the past and another that will change three lives forever.
1. 1977-87

**A/N:** The motel sections of this chapter are set in 1991 and do catch up in the next chapter, I promise not to get too Cloud Atlas-y on you. Honestly.

* * *

They're in a motel just outside of Salt Lake City when he tells him. Car engines burning, and a lump in his throat. Cheap cable television flickers in and out of Technicolor; some jerk ass reporter running his mouth off about some rockstar checking out, with about as much flair as his haircut. Joey is stood in the doorway. Jesse, sat on one of the twin beds, tells him.

He stops, fades. It is, probably what the doctors would call, a catatonic state. Breaths in and Joey's footsteps are white noise against eyelashes beating on his cheek, far too loud. His insides have shrivelled up and curled like a witch's fingernail (yes, dying men do tend to be more poetic). Stone cold on the hard wood floor, he comes round, and looking a Joey Gladstone makes him wonder if he's gone already; no goodbyes, no heartbreak Becky, just slipping away at three-thirty in the afternoon. But the phone clicking, and Joey is mumbling something into the receiver that Jesse can't understand, glass of water in hand.

"What was that?" he asks when he's been propped up against the wall and given sips of water like a suckling puppy.

Their meeting for the next day with the head of a bacon bubble gum has been cancelled; Joey thinks they better go home. Seeing as Jesse's already spent the promised paycheck on wedding – _oh, the wedding_ – he would have slapped his business partner all the way back to San Francisco if he'd had the energy.

"Joey, I need that money. The wedding-"

"You can't seriously be considering going through with that."

Power cut. TV off. The fan's groan then splutter tries to shatter the atmosphere but now the standing heat drips down on sweaty shoulders. Jesse scrambles to the lemon-lime kitchenette, left feet and clinging hands. They can all go to hell. He'll go to Mexico, living out the rest of his days singing Spanish versions of Elvis songs.

"Jess, you're sick," Joey's voice is soft and low, and so unlike Joey that Jesse shudders. He doesn't want to hear it, any of it - talk about the incurable and inevitable, how careful he must be and how important it is that he looks after himself; pathetic. Feels incredibly old for twenty-seven, "you carry on, you'll get sicker, Becky - what if you had kids-"

And he crumbles, shouts, running-a-hand-through-hair kind of mess, hot puddle of hair wax and shaving cream on the garish 1960's tiles. Joey catches him. There is a beat, "I love her."

"I know."

When he's holding him like that, just like this, Joey can take in the younger man's smell of hard work, some artificial exotic fruit and desperation. He lets him shiver into waves of calm, slowly breathing in and out. Of course he wants to say it, of course it would somehow make everything bearable, but it's not (and never will be) the time so he stays quiet.

"I love you," it's there; it hangs in the air like the first few notes of a favourite song, the familiar giving a rush of excitement. Jesse takes him by the shoulders, blue against blue for a moment, scared and the other steady, touches his cheek like it's red hot, "God, Joey, you… you-"

"It's okay," and that's it, "I'm okay."

* * *

He says little and smokes much –

Pre-rolled little packages which fit perfectly between fingers and lips, mass manufactured to make you feel good – you, the all American guy, slicked back hair and quivering lip – or at least trick you into thinking you feel good, reel you in.

– He is the youngest at the party and undoubtedly the thinnest. He is as thin as the blade the condemned man on the car radio used to slaughter his victims. Jesse feels envious of him, monster, this supposedly sub-human; not having to live with his sins, not having to carry them around with him every goddamn day of his goddamn life. That bastard got it easy, that's for sure. The electric chair burning up mistakes in every vein. They've been reading Ginsberg in Lit; is it him or Whitman making him so wet? Probably spending too much time with Danny, Jesse laughs at that. Makes his way into the kitchen, might as well fix himself a drink, this is a college party after all, and if Pam isn't going to dance and just cuddle the baby it is his duty as the younger brother.

"You don't need that, buddy."

Busted. That goof friend of Danny's, Joey or something else that makes him sound like he's still in the second grade. The college must have taken him on some kind of government scheme, doesn't look like the kind of chimp whose folks can give out wads of cash. He's smiling, juniors don't smile; they lounge around making out to some kind of electro crap they call music in England.

Kanga blonde dipshit is holding his drink, "thought milkshakes were more your thing, Jess?"

Jesse glares at him, jumps up onto the breakfast bar to feel more powerful. The guy's a complete mess; some lessons c/o family Katsopolis could certainly in order. Instead he says something about the wreck being as arse, incidentally an arse that isn't old enough to drink either

"My best friend's married with a kid, what've you got?"

Twenty minutes later, black coffee black sky, the two J's are sat on the roof – more distant from the party than apart. Joey got the recorder player resting on the windowsill from inside his room, he's got to stay sharp for his first gig of '78, underground club at 3am. Jesse sniggers and Joey sniggers back the best he can with a grin, found an Elvis record to cheer Jesse up; poor kid's not the brightest spark in the high school bulb and having that European tyrant for a dad (absent fathers are always more supportive from bar). For someone of fifteen, Jesse does seem to spend an awful lot of time in his own head – heartbreak hotel and guitar. They find, as the songs click into sultry slurs, that Jesse and Joey actually have quite a lot in common; namely Tanner trails named Danny and a dream. Joey aspires to have a weekly Saturday night slot on the comedy circuit all the way over in NYC. Jesse and his band can be the opening act; depress the punters just enough with some hard rock to make them grateful for any relief. Perfect plan. They laugh, the two of them. Shoulders, scratched leather and plaid, touching.

There's a scream somewhere, a raucous screech of student hysteria, feet and hands in time to what can only be the Beegees. Jesse is chaining his lucky stripes because he was hoping to get lucky with at least a sophomore tonight. Ash skitters in the air and pools on the skin of his coffee cold. Joey doesn't say anything simply because he's a struggling comic and he needs all the anecdotes he can get. Tells Jesse he should be careful, to which is replied so delicately _shut up, huh?_ Slurp of smoke seasoned beverage:

Joey gulps in laughing delight; white tee splattered brown, Jesse pounding on him (not with the anger he would have anticipated an hour ago, practically playful), there's a hint of a smile in the Greek's face, he should let himself smile more. The perpetrator gets up to fetch the kid a shirt to button over the top because it's grown quite cold for a Californian evening and wet clothes cause colds, Joey Gladstone is prone to the overly guilty conscience of an only child.

"Hideous or Hawaiian?" he shouts, strangely daunted by the challenge of picking out something for the more stylish.

Jesse turns, body half in the warmth and half lingering back, wrinkles up his nose, "you ask that like there's a difference." He's caught suddenly, looking back at Joey looking at something in his closet. Wonders if blue eyes like Joey's are the kind songs are written about; a deep, rich blue that makes gazing into them a self-indulgence. It doesn't occur to Jesse (and probably won't until many years later) that he's never thought such a thing of anyone before, in such lyrical terms, not even Miss Drive-In Fourteen. Her hair was written the same on passport paper, sure, but it didn't shine in late light like spun gold. Hell, even Pam's is straw by comparison.

He slips, dread of slipping into the girls' shower room after gym, he slips into Joey's room after dark. And his mind is wandering because anything is easier than this, here now presently. Cartoon posters and other oddities Jesse would have thought to poke fun at are edged with softness.

"Shirt's on the bed, Jess."

Get the thing on, get outside, have a smoke, simple. Simple. Still he finds himself taking tainted t-shirt off with a yawn, hoping somehow that Big Blues would wander slightly over to him; the faint tan of Athenian summers gone – maybe he does have it in him to write songs after all.

The trap does work, flesh begets flesh after all, and Joey blushes. A beach boy in December sends a shiver down his spine. It's not as if the sight is unusual, it's just – it's just illicit because bedroom and best friend's brother-in-law. But body, body and bones Jesse is the kind of boy Joey can spend warm evenings wondering about. Wondering, wanting, w –

He scrambles to sit on his desk, knocking a book on early-tsarist Russia off in the process. A bang loud enough for Joey to pray that someone will come and investigate. But only Jesse jumps and nothing stirs above slow dancing next door. The mini-fridge is perhaps a godsend.

"Do you want a drink?"

"Got any diet soda?"

He chucks the can, safety of carbonated caffeine between then. Jesse looks hollowed out and comfortable in the purple shirt; he's run his hand through his hair, tired and matted. Joey smiles. Jesse smiles and for a moment they both think perhaps there's something. He flicks through a magazine lying on the nightstand and a story about Danny is being recounted in dramatic detail, whatever it was is gone.

After a while, of course, of course Jesse finds himself asking the inevitable (not that the reply will make much or any difference): "girlfriend, Joseph?"

He looks away because he was never one for lying. Patty's nice, wouldn't be a lie, they do like each other a lot. She laughs at his jokes; they can sit down and watch old cartoons on a Saturday night instead of dancing disco. She doesn't make his skin crawl with excitement when she sits on his bed; they kiss and he doesn't crave more. He doesn't sit on his desk and imagine what it would be like kiss her motorcycle-flavoured neck, down the hollow of her throat. Joey wants to snap back, retort with a joke or similar question, and then he looks at him, Michelangelo holy boy, realises he couldn't dream up a girlfriend if he tried, "no," Joey says.

Jesse considers, closing his eyes at cool relief crashing in his stomach. Joey's biting his lip, there is something untapped at the corner of it. The tension between them is uncoiling like a spring; hot metal, explosions. He goes to say – he doesn't know. A new song blares, thin walls a megaphone. They groan. How they groan. He pipes up with a spit into his empty can how he actually likes the song [the name is not important here] and Joey mumbles how it's _actually_ amazing that Jesse likes something that isn't viva las fifties. In this time, the gap between them has been bridged and pepsi cola bleeds in the stain of its own aspartame at the bottom of the bin.

"Ever done it with a girl?"

A snort: _Cut. It. Out._

"Ever done it with a _guy_?"

"Your sister isn't this crude, you know."

One J perches on a desk chair, spins, and the other J raises an eyebrow at him. Stars outside seem to pallor suddenly to sheer Jesse joy. He really should have closed the window though; the cold is creeping in the New Year. Goosebumps distract him, at least, from the dark-haired butterflies in his chest and a name on the tip of his tongue. Got to talk to Danny, see if anyone's been spiking drinks.

Jesse leans forward – in? no – to pick up the history book which still lies long forgotten, spine bent on the floor. Blistered fingers rest on faded jeans, "man, your cheeks are bright red, you know that, right," the sentence comes away with a note of tenderness; he traces the colour away underneath stubble with his finger, but it's his lips, his lips… "kiss me."

It sounds like a joke, but there Jesse remains, looking up at him, jaw set. His mop of ebony has fallen over his face, obscuring his eyes. Joey smirks, he's as much an actor as he is a liar, tries to make light of it, "what?"

"C'mon, Joe, always cheers the girls up."

And then, boy best friend's brother-in-law is sweeping hair back with one hand and keeping Joey's thigh secure with the other. Bubble burst. He tastes like fire, burnt marshmallows, s'mores. Jesse melts into him with a second's kiss, ever so gently asking for more.

There's a shout far off and Joey pulls away. Countdown. Jesse's eyes watery blue, he steps back. It takes a beat for Joey's white-socked feet to hit the floor. Two for either of them to do anything. Three is crushed against the wall; for god's sake they can't start the new year like this. Joey Gladstone kisses Jesse Katsopolis under the dim glow of a flickering light bulb. So soft it's painful, that the younger man moans and sinks his teeth into his lip. Joey smiles against the metallic taste. They don't laugh when their teeth clash and tongues meet. Jesse's fingers find blonde hair to cling to and Joey's hand a black snug waistband. Waltz, the waltz backwards, towards no-man's land. This is what they write about in novels. This. This wholeness, all that 1978 has ever known.

Cough.

They tear, peel away before jumping. Golden and grinning: Pam, in pink pyjamas and an overcoat, the baby curled up by her shoulder in a matching outfit, luckily asleep, "DJ just wanted to say happy new year to her Uncle Joey."

Before they stubble back an inch or two into reality, the men wonder if they should come up with some excuse as to why they were discovered in such a compromising position, but the January moon hits them both square between the eyes; Pam's a smart girl, she's only done one stupid thing in her life and that was becoming a Tanner. Joey kisses the sleeping pup dutifully on the cheek. Mother whispers into her hair _kisses all round, huh, Deej?_ and Jesse, still shuffling with hands in pockets, is told to grab his jacket because the engine of Danny's beloved Bullet is already running to give them a lift home. He wants to inform his sister very calmly that this would never have happened in any of the dumbass films he's had to sit through with her. He glances back for Joey, but Joey has already grabbed the last of his cigarettes and gone outside. Pam presses her lips to his temple, doesn't make him feel better.

Her dad doesn't believes she's a natural entrepreneur, but Pamela Tanner can balance a baby on her hip, check the oven temperature and close an order over the phone at the same time. Baking is a lucrative business; the average cake takes two hours and three dollars to make, and then it's labelled at just that price per slice in the store. Her parents really don't give her enough credit and whenever she looks at little DJ she promises that she'll never do the same, that she'll always be there whether they stay a family of three or have four other children like her and Danny have dared to dream late at night; two girls and twin boys.

She's just blended bright blue additives in butter and sugar, when the back gate slams and Pam watches her little brother through the kitchen window kick garden ornaments with a filthy look on his face. His wife always glided through a storm, as her husband would say nine years later, nothing ever phased her – so she slides the bowl onto the breakfast table and bundles her daughter into her highchair, _I think we'll have to make some more frosting, Deej._ All sunshine even though she's only smiling to keep her heart inside her mouth.

"You got your stuff back from Danny?" she asks when Jesse dumps a backpack on the floor too heavy to just have unfinished homework weighing it down; the Elvis wig and glittered suit that were used for last week's edition of _Campus Rap._

"Yeah, Mom and Dad home?"

"No, they're…" – Jesse runs a hand through his hand, jittering (maybe she shouldn't have persuaded their mother so fervently not to let the doctors put him on those pills) – "okay, good – why the hell didn't you tell me Joey's doing some bimbo?"

His sister grits her teeth, glances between DJ and her uncle, "Jesse, the baby, huh?"

They sit down with sundae spoons and dip them into the sapphire saccharine until Jesse's biggest concern is his prize molars rotting to black and not his broken heart. He asks questions about Patty and Pam answers them until he's feeling bright enough to sneak his niece licks of icing when her mother's back is turned, "they're very happy if that makes it any easier."

But it's only he comes down from the sugar rush and Pam comes back from putting DJ in her crib, that Jesse starts to cry, hot shuddering tears of a girl losing her first love and not being able to remember how she felt before, "I really like him, sis."

"I know, tough guy," Pam says into his hair, into a hug, "but you're just a kid-"

"And he's a college guy, yeah I know."

She sighs at his tone and pulls him back, "I didn't mean that, I meant you're young, don't let him ruin your life."

He looks up at her, his sister, his saint questioning, "you met Sir Disco when you were my age."

"And I love _Danny_ and DJ very much but I never imagined myself baking cakes until my husband's out of college so we could start our lives together," she's got tears in her eyes now too but Jesse bites back a remark, "you're smart, what were you thinking of doing, marrying him?" (there's a joke in there deep down somewhere).

"You could do so much, Jess, some guy isn't the be all and end all."

His chair topples and crashes on the titled floor as he gets up, incensed suddenly, "what would you know?"

Two hours later when Jesse's missed dinner and played _Can't Help Falling in Love_ at full volume for the millionth time, his sister goes up to see him. He's curled up on his bed, wrapped up in the purple shirt he's slept in every night since New Year's. She looks at him with the eyes of an old lady, tender and epiphanic; he's not the James Dean he wants to be, he's just a little boy with a crushed soul.

"Jess, Mom's worried about you – you didn't come down for fried chicken."

"Come in and slam the door," he says from his cocoon, "I'm sorry for saying what I said."

Pam props him up against her shoulder, holding him like a child, "no, I'm sorry; you're right, I don't know anything about it," she turns off the jukebox, turns to her brother, "but I do know how to make the best banana shakes in the Bay Area, come on."

When Jesse thinks back, he always thinks about how their parents never gave Pam enough credit; how she managed to hold him together as a teenager and even after her death.

Yaya Gina is always saying bad things come in threes and Jesse has brushed it off with youthful optimism that – now, sat outside a gas station in the cold – he can't believe he ever had. In fact it's now that he realises that she's right about lots of things: wear a warm coat, eat regularly and drink more orange juice. Poor Yaya would twist his ear, he's sure, if she knew that he felt like death and hadn't carried enough change to catch a taxi home. But it had really only been when he slumped onto the concrete steps that Jesse had felt the weight of a headache fall around his ears. Up until, then he'd been able to juggle the bad luck as simple misfortunes.

Walking his bike to the garage wasn't too bad because the owner – luckily, an old school friend of his dad's – was nice enough to let him have the repair on tab and pick it up in the morning, use the pay phone. And when Jesse had tried all the contacts in his black book for a ride north and finally plucked up the courage to tap in the last number he wanted call, Joey said _I'm there for you, babe_ and all of Jesse's dimes came spurting back with a hit-the-jackpot clatter.

It's only when he's bought Pam a present, Elvis nursing cloths, with the winnings and is just waiting, that he wants to lie down, preferably in the middle of the road so some big truck can hit him. It's his own fault; he hasn't been paying his beloved Harley half as much attention as he should since Dad pulled him – kicking and swearing – into _the_ business. Music is a pipe dream; being eighteen in the Katsopolis family is old enough to make you an animal killer. Jesse used to smell of lemongrass masculinity, but now no amount of soap can get the stench of rat poison and death out of his pores.

Cars rush past, lights flashing but still no Gladstone glitter – it's been half an hour, for Pete's sake, by the time he gets to the hospital Pam will already be back home with the new baby and he'll have missed it again. Again. He's no exterminator and no brother either; Danny's always going on about how DJ misses her favourite uncle and how he should come over for dinner sometime, but Jesse really doesn't want to add bad uncle to the list as well. He misses her too, it broke his heart when the tiny Tanner trio finally got their own place and things weren't like they used to be. He doesn't weather change well, Jesse Katsopolis.

 _What's your price_ , Joey smirks when he pulls up, too wide of the curb, and leans across to unlock the passenger door. A coat's draped over the seat when Jesse goes to sit down, Joey tells him to put it on and look in the glove compartment. A Hershey's bar and a flask, "how did you know?" Jesse asks in amusement.

"Jess," Driver Joe yawns as they lurch forward, "I could hear your teeth chattering through the phone."

There's a pause. Jesse clears a circle in the condensation on the matchbox window and looks out at the incoming city, butter coloured in the failing light. His hands are affixed to his mouth in frequent fits of coughing by the third mile; retching and spluttering violently until his palms have little red droplets in their creases. But in between Jesse waves Joey onwards.

Eventually, on a wide stretch of road, the car swerves into a layby and Joey sighs; Jesse's fingers are like ice even though his forehead is almost too hot to touch, "you're sick, let me take you home."

"I'm fine," he swallows, "look, I have to be there."

"Jesse, I really don't think-"

Uncle Jesse looks at him for a long moment and Joey finds himself unable to say no when he says please.

"Okay, but don't be expecting me to carry you to the ER – now, drink your coffee."

Jesse keeps his eyes on him; the wick of his mouth, strong hands on the steering wheel, and wonders what kind of father, what kind of husband Joey would make.

"It's a girl. It, Stephanie, she's okay," Jesse says when Joey comes back from getting a third round of coffees – he was ages again, must have got lost in the bleached and bright corridors, "she was having trouble keeping warm at first."

"Does it matter," Joey sits down, closer to him than before, "if she's okay now?"

Jesse shifts towards the light so he's a faceless ghost, shadow thin and his voice raw, so small, "suppose it doesn't."

Joey stays still for a moment – a nurse passes them in a flurry of pink and lilacs, looks at them funny because they're both still wearing their coats with the radiators on – "couldn't you go in and see her?"

"I could," he tugs at his hair awkwardly, Uncle Jesse does, indeed he could but he doesn't want to admit he does actually feel excruciatingly unwell and run the risk of crushing egg shells around the baby and making her sick. But he doesn't say it, for some reason he turns in the plastic chair to stare at the spot where Joey's jaw meets his ear under sandy curls, "I wouldn't be here without you, Joe."

It should be a throw away thank-you but it's not; it comes off softer than even Jesse meant it, as if he's saying a prayer. He folds his arm around the small of the other man's back but they're bulkier than they should be, it makes leaning in difficult and Joey laughs, "Jess, seriously, that flu's making you delirious."

The lights go off and their mutual shadow is pooled with the lights from the unmanned nurses' station. In the darkness, the smell of disinfectant gets stronger and Jesse can feel Joey's bitter breath on his nose, their lips brushing and blending. It's so fragile, so unsure as if they don't know how to be together but then Major Tom memories cause a rocket to explode in Joey's heart and the debris sets fire to his mouth – stops the words tumbling out by pulling away and placing a kiss on the spot Jesse had been looking at on him just moments ago.

Jesse whispers, "you're shaking," and covers his own hands with the ones that still gripping his lapels. Joey thinks in the second before they're interrupted about saying three words he used to say to Patty but never really meant.

"I'm sorry, sir," the nurse returns, looking bruised, looking at Joey, "but if you're not a relative – I'm going to have to ask to you to leave."

He goes to get up, utter an apology but Jesse's got his hand on his knee briefly because he's the one who can charm a situation - _hi, hello, I'm sorry, I don't think we've met_ \- "I'm Jesse Katsopolis, Mrs Tanner's brother," he gestures towards Joey (damn, the nurse is all but floating, he's still got it), "and this fine gentleman here is the closest thing Mr Tanner has to a brother."

"Yes, sir, of course, sir, but-"

"Jesse, please," he squints at the young woman's name badge, "Valerie, it's extremely late and I'm sure you understand it's been a very emotional day. _Please_?" his hand running up her arm accents the word, she flutters and hurries away.

When he turns back to Joey, he's got his arms folded over his knees, shoulders shaking with laughter, "only you could flirt with that massive lump of snot hanging out your nose."

Baby Tanner, Stephanie Judith lies in her hospital icebox; so many lights already on her that Joey jokes that she's doomed to be a performer like her Uncle Jesse. Danny laughs, it is just the three of them, and they all laugh. He heads back to check on his wife and Jesse and Joey are left with the rows of future citizens who just look like chicks, some don't even have names. Barcodes. Bred to stand up straight, bite their tongue until it bleeds – bleed dry, if that's what it takes to make a good impression. For the first time in his life, Jesse can sense God in him; maybe Joey was right, he's delirious. He's not sure if it's for himself, when he kneels down and the other man watches on bewildered, or for his perfect niece, so she doesn't have to suffer like he has done.

She opens her eyes and Jesse threads a finger through one of the slots, and Stephanie wraps her whole fist around it.

It would have been easier to make a compilation tape, Jesse says for the tenth time in two hours amongst the on-going Pam and Dan squabble over who can man the decks. It's all the same; billboards hits of '82 that everyone knows the words to, only his sister wants – _no, Jess, you can't do it_ – a more up beat pop playlist because this is a party and not a place for guests to get depressed and think of all three-hundred and sixty-four mistakes they've made in the year. People want to dance with their red paper cups under the fairy lights.

Jesse looks around at the soulless servants of generic beats, moving their feet in time with the pseudo-polite conversation they're making, and he knows he could never live like this; in a tiny house in a good neighbourhood so it's good _enough_ , and friends who only schmooze. Maybe for Pam and Danny it's different; they bicker like best pals and worst enemies, but always end up giggling at their own expense. His sister never hugged half as much in her whole life as she's done in six years of being a Tanner – Jesse prays that little Stephanie was born with antibodies to fight the compulsive cuddling condition, three of them is all he can stomach.

Watching him with his wife, Jesse almost feels remorseful that he cracked three of his ribs, but they _did_ run off to Reno. He's not a bad man, Daniel Tanner isn't – him and Pam love each other very much, just not the type Jesse would hang out with; the dude whose anecdotes come from books and broadcasts, not real life.

They don't need friends like Jesse does because they've got each other. Of course they've got each other. Jesse Katsopolis has cocks hard for him down Castro, but nothing can even touch the sides. He tries to count on both hands how many guys he's been with in the last two months and he can't, even utilising his toes. He is notorious in the clubs (has been for years, for his good looks and youth), but it's just lately he's been promoted to this god-like platter because he resembles some character on some soap, and that stuff makes moustaches wiggle. Being needed, wanted, moaned for is the most powerful pill to pop. He's addicted; going out every night, blowing all his money on tight jeans and aftershave. The more he does it, however, the less he sees his sister because she knows. Pam pulls him over for one of their very special talks every chance she gets, to show him newspaper articles about some disease that's going around. Makes him promise to be careful, and he is mean and laughs at her because he never gets sick, doesn't she know that?

If he's been particularly busy, slopes home at six in the morning, runs a bath, her words seem to hiss in the taps, and then he'll stay in for one or two nights until he gets calls from long-time lovers promising to lavish him with drinks and a good time, and then it starts again. Sometimes it's longer, when he just likes to date and delight his girlfriends, in different ways, for different reasons. Dinner and a movie, ice cream and ice-skating; soft lipstick kisses and caresses that leave him smiling.

He could have prink crescents covering his collar and juice of an adoring stranger inside him, and Jesse still would never be happy because there's something that always brings him back. Why else would he be here, brings him back to –

"Uncle Jesse, is it time yet?"

DJ is gazing up at him with her butcher boy pyjamas and silver curls – scrunchie, ditzy floral print – and Jesse picks her up, "Uncle Jesse thinks you should be in bed, young lady."

She rolls her eyes right into the back of her head, like her mother, "Daddy said I could stay up."

Another reason he tends to avoid Tanner family jamborees is because they let their eldest daughter run rampant (the kid is well behaved and all), and it's not that they don't care; Pam just seems have gone to the polar opposite of their own upbringing, that had the remnants of Grecian occupation and the order of an army general. He just ends up having to stop her falling down the stairs or bringing a horse into the living room.

He says, placating patience of a parent, "why don't you go have a nap and I'll wake you before the ball drops, okay?"

His niece is an obedient child and grateful she didn't have to go to Granny Tanny's with Stephanie, so she weaves through the party with an inherent grace to her bedroom, teddy bear in hand.

Jesse sets two glasses down on the counter, opens the freezer to retrieve the ice tray; cubes hissing and buzzing like his mind when the warm whiskey hits them, a dab of soda because he's putting off the inevitable. He pops a chicken nugget into his mouth – they should really take their Christmas decorations down – there's tinsel all the down the hallway – their electric bill must be massive – he sits down at the bottom of the stairs finally, gives the other drink to the man next to him.

"Haven't crushed a Viagra into it, have you, Jess?" Joey says without humour, without lifting his head from the hangdog position. He gulps his drink.

Jesse watches him try to find the bottom of the glass, he puts his hand on his shoulder and it takes them both by surprise, "I'm sorry about _SNL_ , man."

It wasn't fair, it really wasn't, what those big boss bastards did to him; call him three hours before he was due on a flight to New York to tell him they'd found someone more suited to the line-up. Jesse wants to promise there'll be other chances but it would sound just as hollow as the dozen people who have said it before, so he offers to take him to a bar instead. This makes the cowering comic laugh at least; they tend to go to the same sort of clubs, only Joey (not nearly as often) prefers dancing over dick, and if they ever catch a glimpse of each other through the strobe lights, their eyes are blank like strangers because they both know what they're escaping. Perhaps it's not like that, perhaps Joey just doesn't want to be associated with him; Jesse does have an artist's tendency to over-romanticise things. Something European in him probably, repressed and dark enough to send him insane.

"Why do we always seem to end up like this," Joey murmurs, thinking aloud rather than a question, "you and me, on New Year's Eve."

Jesse pours the last inch or two of his whiskey into Joey's empty glass with a comrade clatter, "don't know – fate."

He laughs again and this time it fills the corners of his mouth, "you don't believe in that bullshit."

"There's a lot you don't know about me, Joseph."

"I must be the one of the only guys this side of San Francisco who doesn't know much about you."

They are both laughing now to dilute the acid quality of the statement, head thrown back hearty hysterics. Tears run down their alcohol-absorbed cheeks, until their stomachs hurt and Jesse's arm gets caught in the banister. They slump, each holding the other up, still smiling and Jesse can't think of a time with Joey when he _didn't_ end up smiling. _NBC_ really did miss a trick. And suddenly they're talking about everything; the time Jesse was obsessed with _Saturday Night Fever_ and made Pam practise the steps with him all weekend, Joey shows him the gnarly scar at the base of his neck from when he was nine years old and Danny pushed him out the tree house. About the first grade class he taught last semester and this sends Jesse over the edge.

"Do you ever get lonely, Jess?"

"I guess," he replies, his lips so close to Joey's shoulder, each inhalation tasting like vanilla, "seeing what Pam and Danny have –" he pulls back (but not away, never away) to look at his face in the cotton candy light, "you ever had any thing like that?"

A blush reaches Joey's eyes but they still glisten with sadness, don't move from Jesse's, "there was one time when I thought something could be –"

"With Patty?"

"No, no," the words trip off his tongue in long drawn out deliberation but in no uncertain rhyme, "not Patty."

Joey slips (spirits go straight to his head) – carpet burns on denim – bumps knees, noses, lips and he grins. Jesse grips his arms to steady him but his hands slide past shoulders up until they're tangled in downy hair. Joey's got his teeth against the inside of Jesse's lip and each breath is filtered into different lungs with an unforgiving intimacy. All peanut shells and saliva; real stuff you don't find in restrooms and dark alleyways, Jesse is smiling, Joey's gaze moon-lidded on him: "Fate, huh?"

Jesse dips his head to kiss him in agreement but something catches his eye, at the top of the stairs and he hopes to God isn't there. But it feels like Fate is embodied in his five-year-old niece, staring at them with a gleeful glow on her face, interrupting, "hi, Deej."

"Were you two _kissing_?"

"I thought we had a deal," Uncle Jesse says, singsong as she reaches them and he lifts her onto his lap, "it isn't time yet."

DJ rolls her eyes at him again, "the music is too loud, I couldn't sleep," before wiggling away and running to find her parents –

– _shit, Danny._ They pound away the magic spells, following her, forty-two inches of truth. And just over the threshold, father and daughter in the living room, Danny is glaring at them: the two men with kiss-bitten lips and hands in their pockets. Pam comes into focus, doe-eyed; she sails over to her husband and plies DJ with candy over to the couch.

It is explained with a comical ease until the vein in Danny's head stops jutting out the side of his head, that Joey was simply getting something out of Jesse's eye and – _come on, man, you know what kids are like. Kissing, seriously?_ – the three of them dissolve into laughter, unnerving raucous sniggering that leaves none of them convinced even though it seems to assure Danny enough for him to joke about it.

"Good because my best friend and brother-in-law being fags together," as he catches his breath and starts to walk back towards the party, "would just be so fucking wrong."

It takes a long moment when they're left alone for either of the men to look up from where Danny had been standing. And when they do, they look through and around each other because now the bloody light is tainted; the sudden mixed miasma of male leaving them nauseous.

"Would it," Jesse says quietly before Joey has a chance to move past him, "be so wrong?"

Joey considers, studying him hard for even two seconds hurts, increases his heart-rate to rocket speed, "no, but –"

Jesse feels his own heart fall and crack, crystallised, on the cream floor, he meets Joey's gaze half way, "but it doesn't mean anything, right?"

Disappeared behind the bathroom door, washing his feelings away with rose-scented soap, Joey mutters _right_ , before he goes.

"You can't, Jesse," Pam sighs, elbow deep in washing-up and passing a plate to her little brother who is suddenly having very big ideas, "you've had too much to drink, I swear to God."

The party has mellowed by quarter to twelve, guests filing out to go onto someone else's place or back home to welcome '83 in with their families; the remainder smoking and socialising out on the patio or sleepily watching TV on the coach. Quiet enough to talk in almost audible tones, "I _can't_ wait another year, sis," Jesse says between drying plates and putting them away, "I have to tell him – fuck Danny."

His sister drowns DJ's smiley face cup in thought and lets it bob to the surface, "I don't know if Joey will share that sentiment," she hands him the artificially asphyxiated and Jesse rubs suds out of its eyes, "they've been friends, _best_ friends forever."

When they've finished, Pam pulls her gloves off with a snap, and changes tactics with a smile, "I'm not saying Joey doesn't feel the same about you, I'm just saying–" she points to DJ curled up peacefully on the rug like a Golden Retriever, "go put DJ into bed for me and think it over, okay?"

And so – five minutes before the ball drops, Jesse comes back from wishing his niece sweet dreams – he has a well-rehearsed speech in his head: _I love you, I want to be with you_ and everyone else will be preoccupied with midnight and other lovers that they won't notice him kissing Joey. More than that doesn't matter, they can talk about it over eggs in the morning, he just wants to go home with him tonight. Where is he? – Jesse had thought he'd still be sulking somewhere over that stupid show but he's not in the den or the living room with his head in his hands.

Pam shouts something as Jesse ventures into the garden, again but he is so stunned by the cold air and cigarette smoke that he doesn't hear her. Until he sees it and it rings in his ears: _Wait, Jess, come back!_

He sees it. The image penetrates his skin, bones and soul and he can't look away. Paralysed, he sees him. Joey is there amongst the crowd, Danny nearby him in conversation, with some board Jesse's never seen before, kissing away the taste of him. He doesn't even look up in the midnight minute when everyone is migrating inside, doesn't see Jesse leave the house and not look back.

* * *

It only gets later and colder. Jesse stands on the balcony with a six pack of beer at his feet, untouched for the last bundle of half an hours where he's been positioned comfortably between sky and holy ground, there must have been plenty of suicides in this motel before. Coxing traffic would mask the bang, hard concrete underneath, and trees out back like health spa to add some purity. What is he thinking? Since his diagnosis – maybe even before because, deep down denial he did know – it's as if he has this other thing living inside of him; cluster of depressed cells doing the talking for him, making his irises swim in their desperation. _None of this is really him_ , he repeats into the mirror until he's starting to believe it, Jesse Katsopolis does not want to die. Does he? Wants to grab a beer can and smash it empty against his head instead.

Weeks, and he's talked to Pam about it: snuck out before the milkman and the paperboy's alarm clock going off, stopped at a drive-thru (no flower shops, dahlias die) to get a diet coke and two quarter pounders with cheese; her favourite order she'd shoved down his throat ever since Stephanie was born _because I'm on a diet._ He's talked to her gravestone with grease gathered at the corners of his mouth; hushed ketchup tones in case he woke any angry souls sleeping underneath. Of course, you can't see a dead person's eyes sink into the back of their skull when their face is crushed against the words, Jesse never expected Joey's touch to make glass rise to the top layer of his skin, all over again. Suddenly it's real and not just something that Jesse can pretend isn't happening, it can't only wake him in the middle of the night and punch him in the gut whenever he's playing with Michelle, he's put the burden on Joey's shoulders too. He feels guilty.

Could have left it one more week at least. One hundred and eight hours of sleep and family time: the room just off the hall, being woken at the crack of dawn to watch cartoons with multi-coloured cereal and wooden spoons. He should start calling up his black book really and see where he can sleep. Jesse turns to Joey watching him.

"Thinking of jumping?"

 _God, Joey, you…_ ringing in his ears again. Thirteen years ago, 1977 - really? - he looks the same in the partial sunlight, only he's not searching for a shirt, answers instead. His fingers are flicking from the tip of his nose to his ear lobes; he looks goddamn exhausted. Whilst Jesse is tired, there's something absolving in his own tiredness that has become a comfort, the bags that have suddenly ruptured black under Joey's eyes only make his heart ache. Fifteen year old Jesse was staring at him like this considering falling in love, not falling over the balustrade. Everything was so simple. What he said before wasn't a mistake or outburst of emotion – however uncharacteristic of Jesse it was – he does love him. Is worried about him, wishes things were different because it's quietly obvious to both of them that this would never have happened if they'd just been honest with each other, and that does make it worse.

"Just tired of life."

Before Jesse does anything he'd come to regret, whether that'd be impaling himself on the pine trees or a pair of lips that aren't rightly his, Joey asks him to come and help him pack the bags. After enough sorrys and mime replies for the weeks he didn't tell him, they're folding freshly hung clothes with a Danny level of neatness. Jesse makes a half-hearted joke, it makes sense he became even more anal after Pam died but Joey doesn't laugh (he cannot bear, cannot bear this silent treatment).

He says, "after Pam died you were amazing, bringing everyone together like that."

"I left the state pretty quick."

There's a knock at the door and Jesse goes to answer it; some woman asking something in some drunken way, Joey takes the moment in deep breaths to pair off his socks, "before," he continues, "you know, when Danny couldn't get out of bed, let alone look at the baby - you got yourself and your parents round there as soon as DJ called."

The other man is glaring at him now, unsure if his abrupt remark is spiteful or not - _even contemplating suicide is disgusting, putting your family through that again_ \- he slams the case shut, nails digging into the leather facing, "what's that supposed to mean, Joe?"

And Joey looks at him confused before realising what a complete dickhead he was even mentioning that, not thinking, instead of his zip, he closes the gap between them so he can touch the hands Jesse pulls away, "what I mean was, people - I, Becky, Danny, whoever - will help you like that too."

"Not the same."

He finally manages to catch the fingers that tremble between his, "it is the same, I promise."

Jesse tells him to go shower with the sternness of a mother and Joey doesn't argue. He runs the water until it's loud enough to drown out every noise and hot enough to leave blisters. He slides his back down the flimsy curtain, sitting against the drain with his knees tucked under his chin. Hasn't cried like this since his hamster in fourth grade died, and Danny called him a baby but still bought him a red slushy.

When he remerges, his bones hollow and body hungry, their bags are ready by the door and Jesse's laid the smart clothes they'd chosen for the meeting tomorrow out on their bed respectively because, he explains to Joey's shocked expression, that he's taking him out for the fancy lobster meal he's making him miss.

They both end up smiling.

* * *

Every shrink he's ever seen has said the same: he should talk about it, but he never does. Rarely thinks about it because HighSchool Jesse read once that a memory changes every time you remember it. So sometimes, he'll imagine around it; black spots for background, smiling faces blurred but never concentrating on yellow golden happiness. Blue dungarees and pink paint on her hands. He doesn't want to change it, let those precious moments by the atrocity that succeeded them only forty minutes later. Killed upon impact, open head wound. Crashing against the cries of three children losing their mother.

Between the years 1991 and 1997, Jesse actually goes to forty different shrinks. Some under pseudonyms (Jesse Cochran, Adam Katsopolis), some out of state because travelling was preferable to bumping into at the market and seeing as he only saw each one of them once, booking into a bed and breakfast every week wasn't going to be an issue. When asked about them – post-session, pre-takeout cup of hot black sanity in the car's cup compartment – Becky and/or Joey sitting down to have a talk with him, Jesse would simply say that they weren't right – every time. Their couch was too hard/too soft, their diploma didn't look real/they were quacks/just too ugly to look at for a course of six hours, two hundred dollars each. Joey would get mad and walk out whereas Becky would shake her head and spend the next half an hour on the phone trying to find someone else.

In truth he didn't see the point, although he never told his lovers why. There was no point because none of these doctors, psychotherapists could bring his sister back, replace this disease with her or do anything remotely helpful – he could use the money to buy one of Elvis' sofas for his and Joey's apartment instead. Something tangible at least, feelable, breathable like her laughter when she walked into his living room, drinking orange juice from the carton because she was a slob at heart.

"Quit beating off and come give me a hand."

Jeans unbuttoned around his hips, sour cream potato chips, Jesse is enjoying his day off: kicking back and not having to think about death. He's not going to have it ruined by wall primer getting in his hair and having to play ballerina with Stephanie as soon as she gets home. His sister makes faces his plans of fried chicken and going down to the clubs on his new Harley, even though he says he's studying.

"You're watching Oprah," Pam switches it off because apparently she doesn't believe it counts as a social science, and scoots down next to him to bring him out of the couch coma. She smiles on his shoulder – all his cards on the table and she's got the ace; Danny's in LA for an interview for a morning news show that will give the ever expanding family enough money per year to get DJ a horse of her own, Stephanie into the independent kindergarten all her friends are going to and little Michelle can grow up with Mommy at home instead of waist deep in flour twelve hours a day. Her little brother is a soft touch really, "don't make me do it all by myself," – she just out her bottom lip just like her daughters when they want Uncle Jesse to do something he doesn't – "please?"

"As long as I don't have to paint the bunnies."

She gives him a hand up and dust salty coruscations off of his shirt in true Tanner spirit. Jesse realises with 20/20 hindsight that even if the tragedy hadn't have happened, he would've remembered this day anyway; one of those clear May days where winter is a distant memory and there's summer energy buzzing in the air. Him and Pam are getting along like when they were young enough to hang out in their adjoining bedrooms but old enough to not hate each other, she's happier than she's ever been and he's looking well enough that for once she doesn't bug him about getting tested (it all seems to have petered and died off to nothing now anyway).

Even goes so far as to punch him playfully in the arm. "Would it make you feel better," she mocks him and they're giggling like two schoolgirls who haven't got death dates tattooed on the back of their necks, "if I went and got us some beers and a Playboy?"

He tries to convince her to hitch a ride on his bike and pick the car up later, after their family dinner which always was a custom whenever Danny was away and Jesse usually skipped, but she's still hung up on the time they went through a neighbour's manicured hedge and she broke her arm.

Pam says, "see you in five, dude," and the next time he sees his big sister, she's lying on a slab with the same light still in her face. So Jesse sobs into his father's chest, an only child, that she can't be dead.

He always thought that Pam would be there to hold his hand at his first funeral, not on the other side of the altar.

He'd avoided funerals until now, band practice instead of saying goodbye to the junior high janitor, out of town for family friends' but now Jesse's twenty-four and watching a grieving man make a speech about his absent wife, and there's no escaping this one. The baby smiles up at him from his lap in her princess peach dress and grasps at his nose. His tears fall into her hair whilst he watches his mother usher Stephanie up the aisle to go outside. The poor kid never cries. Pews that seat twelve hundred and only have two makes Jesse angry that such a holy place could make it look like his sister didn't matter. Around, the people who fill them look empty-eyed, unblinking as Danny walks back down the steps and sits back beside his eldest. Some of them aren't even wearing suits; neighbours and old friends, none of them knew his sister like he did, he knew she wouldn't have wanted this.

No, the wake is worse. He cannot bear it, this neatly parted hair, slime he cannot bear it. In the house, the one she and Danny bought for family and happy times; she still had pink paint on her hands when she'd come to see him. And now everyone is here, free-loaders looking for booze and everyone else wanting not to talk about Pam but doing nothing but. It's infuriating, just dancing to her favourite songs and telling the kids funny stories, now that's what she would have had in mind, but DJ and Stephanie are in the corner with that girl from next door and Michelle is happy in her crib. This forced sorrow feel disrespectful; his sister wasn't just some old lady, she was young, she would have wanted a party. A celebration! Not this maudlin mingling to the sappiest records in Danny's collection.

It's ten, he could easily slip away now, sheepish little brother smile. He is going to be sick.

Behind the bushes, away from the bright lights and hushed conversation. A teenager again – King Katsopolis, bad boy, he laughs before he starts to cry. The air is icy out, alcoholic as he gulps it in, in until his lungs are full and it hurts. Until he feels pain, pain like she felt. _Damn it, sis._

The front door creaks, "I thought you could do with some water."

It is like seeing his own ghost dressed in black and wearing grown-up shoes. He's lost the freshman fifteen that had clung to him even after graduation, but his hairstyle is still questionable. So long ago and still Jesse doesn't try to hide his tears. They sit huddled together on the mosaic steps, praying for the clouds to pass so they can see the stars. No one's thought to ask Jesse how he feels but of course Joey does.

"Pam always talked for both of us at these kind of things, she was good like that."

They stay like that for a while, until the tapping of shoes starts to switch frequency towards the back door checkpoint into an orchestra of condolences. Jesse notices Joey has his jacket on, which is odd just popping out on a spring evening, "you were going?"

Joey has never stayed long at funerals because he's never needed, standing around and getting glared at for making jokes when they were only to mask his own emotion. He's always the guy at the back of the church or funeral parade that no one really knows or can put their finger on why he's there, so slipping out in a rush of smiles and sorrys has never really mattered to anyone. But this is different, "no, I can stay."

Jesse gets out cigarettes and rolls them back and forth in his hands like he's seen in movies but never thought you actually did in real life. He fumbles around in his pocket, finds a bunch of receipts and chucks them all together in next-door's trash – Joey is impressed. He looks at Jesse, a pink scrunchie crushed in his palm, holds it up to throw, Joey grabs his wrist – _don't, Jess_ – slowly replacing sister scented cotton with his fingers, brother letting his head fall onto his shoulder, "my parents are staying here tonight – I don't want to go back to that house on my own."

"Don't, crash at mine."

Jesse looks at him for a split second like he's mad, completely, deliriously insane, but then he says, "thanks, man," and runs inside to grab his things whilst Joey gets the engine running.

Jesse, bitterly, had also always thought that Joey would live in some dingy pervert's basement downtown, but instead of half-cut junkies littering the sidewalk; there are neatly trimmed hedges and picket fences. The various neighbours are pointed out as they cruise nouveau suburbia: the woman three doors down has a drinking problem, Ms Opposite binges and purges on family bags of _Cheetos_ all day whilst her husband's at work because he's sleeping with – no, not his secretary – her best friend, and the gentleman next door to her jacks off every night in his attic room with the lights on and blinds open.

Joey explains, when they pull up at the biggest, most run-down mansionette on the street that he lodges with an old lady at half the rent its worth because she wants a companion rather than a pay check, "but her kids put her in some home down in Palo Alto," he says as he jumps out of the yellow tin can he calls a car, "so I'm staying here just until this last three months rent is up."

Inside, he has made the place his own; Neptune and paper-plate Pluto DJ made him for a birthday one year hang between expensive 1930s siblings, that creepy mannequin Danny pretended to have sex with at his belated bachelor party in the corner – perhaps _pervert_ was the right word after all. Joey isn't like that though; he's going through cupboards for something to go with the tall glasses of milk he's already put on the coffee table. All Jesse actually wants is cigarettes and alcohol, strong enough to cover the sick film on the back of his tonsils, but Joey is trying and he's sweet that makes Jesse feel better than he has in a long time.

Jam saturates in brown bread under lamplight, over stories they share on the betasseled couch, moving closer to each other with each bout of tears. The two Js have changed into matching sweatshirts; Jesse's hair has fought back against beeswax battle and rebels in late night laziness. Joey chatters on because the silence is unbearable and the other listens until the next wave comes. Crumpled and torn together.

"You can sleep in my bed," Joey tries to prop Jesse up in parental tones – they are both sleepy enough to be a little smiley.

"Did Patty accept that invitation?" Jesse asks.

"Didn't offer one."

"Not that time," Jesse grins in the darkening face of grief, sees Joey return it. It's flirtatious, only better because of its ease, _not that time._ Sees that Joey doesn't have someone's soul sewn to the backs of his heels and their irises glowing up at him in the candid eyes of a child every time he hugs his nieces. He seems to float sometimes, Joey does, between life and Looney Tunes; maybe it's the different type of void. Of never having a sidekick, having to talk twice as much and two times as loud. Make jokes or have them made about you, Jesse gets it now.

He loves him – how can you lance a wound when the salt is already seeping within, he loves him. His sister carried the grace of god with her, she was right, "Pam was the only one I could talk to about…about-"

Joey watches Jesse's face freeze as his throat collapses around the sentence, lips finding a smile that's far too wide, "do you remember that New Year's party… '77, wasn't it? You were staying up for that gig and I-"

Joey puts his hand on his knee, it should be uncomfortable but it's not, "you were far too young to be there."

"You put on Elvis records," Jesse sets down his empty glass, the movement dislodging Joey's hand but Jesse retrieves it with his own and they're holding hands, "you gave me your shirt and I left."

Joey starts to smirk, remembering, and bites his tongue to stay in line because they're moving closer to the dangerous territory that's lain overgrown and gathering dust for four years, "I'll go put the hot water on so you can have a shower," he goes to get up but Jesse is only inches away and gripping him.

"Don't leave me."

"I'm not leaving you, Jess, I'm just-"

"Don't _leave_ me," they melt into the kiss like a warm bath, a deep sleep, a coma but Jesse understands, somehow, that Joey is leaving a small pocket of air in it, so Jesse can pull back and laugh at his own sadness, for the sake of his own ego but he doesn't, won't, he fills the gap with a painful kind of urgency. No words can offer this comfort, this strawberry-sweet tenderness. Falling onto the coach, toppling, Joey gasping.

He draws back, aware of his racing pulse, Jesse's legs either side of him, "are you sure?"

Jesse still has his hands in his hair, "I want this," he mumbles between kisses, "I want you."

Joey does not know, until their lips stick for an extra fraction of a second, until it falls away, the weight of his anxiety. He squirms to stand, Jesse's hand in his, breath on his neck (hot shivering poison), with unshakable confidence that only lust and long days can behold he leads him into his bedroom. Same posters, same bed sheets that have been burned into Jesse's memory for so long. Joey licks away his laughter.

They fumble around in the dark, for buttons and belt buckles, because neither of them wants to take their hands off each other. Their senses are heightened; vibrations are running against the walls, through touch they can see their eyes smouldering into raging seas, body brail. Joey pushes Jesse onto the single bed, rips his zip on the way down.

"Have mercy," Jesse says.

At four Joey is woken by Jesse's gaze boring into his back. He's sitting up against the headboard, wearing a Donald Duck robe and Joey would laugh in his rolled-over sleep haze if Jesse didn't have the red eyes of a fallen Botticelli woman.

"Couldn't sleep, kept thinking."

Joey reaches up and catches Jesse's jaw with his thumb, imploring for him to lie back down: _hey, I know._

He switches on his lamp and Jesse falls into the hollow of his chest, doesn't even paw away when Joey starts running the knots out of his hair carefully with his fingers, actually pulls his free arm around him so he's locked at Joey junction. It's a strange kind of a feeling Jesse's never had before, not in his heart but in the pit of his stomach; warmth contained in a world within another's body, anything said here would not go any further than its echo, "it's like now she's actually gone, she's not part of anything else, I didn't think."

Jesse looks up at him and Joey pushes his black hair away from his eyes as he does; they've got a rough cut-diamond look and Joey thinks just for a moment that he's beautiful, "kiss me," Greek god-boy smiles and Joey complies, dutifully on the mouth, "no, for real," this time it's harder because apparently crushed teeth mean something.

The thought knocks the air out of him with closed lips when Jesse wonders whether Joey feels the same, doesn't love him. It sends metallic repercussions down his spine, he doesn't move – three weeks ago he would have got up in a instant and called a cab with his jeans hanging on his hips and shirt balled up in a fist, now he stays, hoping for something.

"What's the point of me staying here," he says deliberately, "mom and dad are going over to my grandparents', and Danny and the kids have got Claire," Jesse looks at Joey and holds it like a challenge, waiting, but Joey doesn't say it.

"Try getting some sleep, buddy."

His eyelids droop and flutter back into sleep. When Jesse whispers _I love you_ , he nods into his pillow and is asleep before realising that the other J never closed his eyes.

When Joey wakes again it's a car horn and an engine running. The cold space beside him is a jolt; suddenly he's running out onto the porch in his robe. A neighbour on the other side of the road is walking her show pooch; this will burn up the inter-suburban phone lines for sure but Joey doesn't care, if he were any more immature he would have poked his tongue out at her. Jesse's there, there up against the taxi, talking to the driver in yesterday's suit and boots, Joey shouts his name before skipping a few too many flagstones in his step.

"Where are you going?"

Jesse can barely turn his head; much less look him in the eye, "don't know."

"Jess, look – please-"

He tears his gaze up and away, watches Joey swallow his feelings back with a look of contempt, "yeah, what are you going to say?"

Joey splutters and flatters until Jesse swings himself into the back of the cab like a rockstar, "Jesse – I was scared, come on – I love you."

"Too late, Joe," one tap and he is gone.

 _Jess_

 _I'm probably the last person you want to hear from, I get it. I only got your address from DJ because I really had to write you._

* * *

3am on the dot – Joey's eyelashes are tiny vibrations of sleep and Jesse is wide awake, second cup of coffee, pacing up and down their room as if to leave marks in the carpet. Ropes, hard liquor, sleeping pills all seem like a good idea. He could go to the convenience store on the corner but Joey might wake and worry, and in truth Jesse doesn't want to be alone, an unconscious presence seems to be keeping him safe.

He rummages through his bag; noisy because Joey is a lighter sleeper than Jesse thinks, for his glasses and notebook, already got the emergency flashlight from the kitchenette. Sits on the chair next to the balcony doors, slightly ajar so at least he has some natural light. He's loved Joey for as many years as this journal is old; Pam, the accomplished diarist in their family, had bought it for him after that fated New Year's to help her little brother with his feelings for her conscience more than his pain, it's a girly thing to do anyway. Instead of essays to empty pages, Jesse's always written lyrics but those pages had been filled long ago and now just crumpled bits of paper are squeezed between the covers. There's a pocket at the back that has lint lining its edges because it hasn't been touched for so long, an envelope enveloped inside it. The letter Jesse was going to write to Becky is forgotten and he reads this until his shoulders start to heave.

 _Jess?_ The voice comes from his business partner's bed and the sheets are pulled back, not in Jesse's imagination. He climbs in, Joey's warmth and smell a comfort but not the same, turns his head into his chest and Joey rambles on about stuff that doesn't matter until he stops crying, is asleep.

 _Jess_

 _I'm probably the last person you want to hear from, I get it. I only got your address from DJ because I really had to write you._

 _My friend, Tom – owner of your favourite bar, remember? He died a couple days ago. It was really sudden like they're saying. And you know what he was like; he was a tough guy, Jesse. Please look after yourself; you're not as indestructible as you think, okay? It would mean so much to Jeff if you could make it on Thursday. Call your mom if you can't come home, everyone misses you. I miss you._

 _Hope you got to Graceland._

 _Your pal, Joey_

* * *

Rain turns a narrow path into streams of mud and dead birds. Fall has condensed, because it's the kind of rain that sizzles on your shoulders and clings to your bones even in warmth; Joey has his hands around a coffee cup. The number twenty-seven bus is swelling like a cow, on the other side of the window, ready for the slaughter with damp commuters tugging on its udders, the sign should read: _next stop, Burger King._ Close enough to San Francisco that Joey didn't have to fly but a good few hundred miles of neutral ground between them so Jesse didn't feel like he was being cagouled into anything. A diner; roller-skates, and spiders trapped under glass prisms of sugar shakers. Crooks and cops sit side by side at the bar, sharing a bottle of mustard and the smell of each other's bacon.

Jesse is three refills and a jam doughnut late, ordering even before he looks at Joey and still presumes he's paying; pancakes, sausages, toast, two chocolate muffins, and it does look like he hasn't eaten in the three months he's been away. Joey watches him with a grateful ease, pleased to see him but somehow not able to stop himself retracing the golden spots his lips had been that are now tinged with sadness. He pours their coffee just as a trucker drops his plate and it shatters against the patchwork tiles, Joey jumps and Jesse scoffs into a mouthful of saturated fat.

"No way," he says in a breath before ordering an ice cream sundae – _not a chance_ – when the waitress has gone away.

Joey waits until he's got to the sauce surprise at the bottom of the glass to speak again. It is a tall order to ask any twenty-four year old to move in with his brother-in-law and help raise his three daughters, especially if they've only just started along the promising career path of chief dish washer in a Tennessee tavern.

But Jesse only has a caramel heart that has been candied by grief and starts to melt as soon as he sips his coffee; stupid Joey, blonde kanga dipshit can barely write his own name and yet he remembers an exact Katsopolis ratio of caffeine to creamer, "I need terms and conditions," he stirs in the beating _Sweet'N Low_ , "no diapers, no dinner duties – I'm just the cool uncle."

"Right."

The next two hours pass in a flurry of twenty dollar bills added to their tab, and negotiations that make anything between Russia and Reagan seem like a game of Go Fish; Jesse has Stephanie's room and Joey has the alcove, unless it's to do with the kids or absolutely imperative, they do not make conversation, and bathroom rotas are to be strictly adhered to as to avoid any awkward mishaps. They don't talk about why all these rules are necessary, they dodge the truth like true politicians, frown into crumbled napkins while wiping their mouths instead.

Sparks fizz, pop and smoulder between their fingertips like the static on the end of the telephone when Joey had called Jesse long-distance and toyed with the cord in his hands. Face-to-face disturbance is a fly landing on the jukebox and changing the song, or the rowdy couple in the booth behind them. And then the two of them look at each other, smiling in spite of themselves, wondering if they would have ever been like that until Jesse slopes off to the restroom like a condemned man making his final walk. Joey knows Jesse hasn't forgiven him, probably never will, and anything he says now will seem hollow in hindsight – _I love you_ never sounds the same when it's been mulled over.

"One week," Jesse repeats once they're in the car lot, astride his motorbike and Joey with the gas pump in his hand, ready to wave the dust the away, "I'm only staying one week and then you and Danny will have to learn to look after yourselves.

Of course it isn't one; weeks are like drinks and it's never just _one_ drink. It's two, three, four until they're passing the bottle to and fro, buzzing with rebellion and excitement. A month into their co-habitation, one night when his sister's ghost can be seen in every mirror, Jesse finds himself wandering around the kitchen in search of milk and solace. He pours two glasses because he knows his cartoon comfort is sat on the couch, TV barely buzzing in the silence. It's four O'clock in the morning and he doesn't want to play his guitar up in the attic until the milkman comes again.

The living room is dark, with Joey's face glistening in the multi-coloured glare; he moves his legs so Jesse can sit down beside him and hands him a blanket, not uttering a word until Yogi has got his picnic basket –

There's always an _until_ with you, Pam used to say, you put something off _until_ something else happens; there won't always be time for that, Jesse, sometimes now is good. Maybe that's why he's here when the sun isn't even up, between Joey and a hard place because she won't let her brother live comfortably in her house _until_ he makes peace with him.

– The insomnia wasn't bad at first because Jesse still had plenty of songs to write about fast cars and funerals, now he's just left with feelings he can't hide in verse, practising popular songs that don't really mean anything but will go down well at the Smash Club, the kind of crowds that don't know what its like to have a dead person following you around. He's thinking about getting close to Jesus but he turns to Joey on nights like this. The rules they made have ended up being like every other code of conduct that has been presented to Jesse Katsopolis, he broke them. Treads the line as if there's a principle to catch him out when really the only thing he's letting down is his own. It snowballed in the September heat, it wasn't intentional (he tries to bargain with himself), a quick jab in the ribs to going to the grocery store together, they never intended to fall back into old habits.

 _I don't love him. I don't love him. I don't love him_ is what echoes most nights into unfamiliar pillows that smell of lemon fabric softener and baby oil; times when he feels fifteen again but doesn't have Pam to soothe him. Maybe he parted his hair a certain way, Joey has that day, or read a particular story to Stephanie that made Jesse want to be the one he was putting to bed. Perhaps it's not as innocent as that, and he has to roll onto his side and focus on the pink bunnies instead of forbidden fruit overflowing. Paper cuts on magazines. Daisy chains DJ makes in the wind. They mean nothing, his feelings, but then he'll see Joey chatting up the cashier at the gas station to check his watch and know that they mean _something._

"Jess," Joey whispers, their eyes locking hand on thigh as he leaned over the other man to get the remote, hovering now plastic, flesh and pyjama cotton.

"We can't."

They both know it's true; it's been true ever since they moved in, but hearing it aloud makes it shatteringly loud. The milkman clatters up the front steps bearing three pints and a moment of consideration. Even if – there is an if there for possibility – they loved each other, they can't go fucking under Danny's roof, break his trust; he wouldn't see it as it really is, it'd be hell, unbearable, a second nightmare coming true, his wife just died. They can't. Joey has tears welting in his pores and Jesse bites his lip. Michelle starts to cry too as though on cue and he gets up, shaking off the dust. He presses a hand into Joey's shoulder and Joey touches his fingers before he starts to climb the stairs.

"I love you, Jesse."

"I love you too, Joseph."

* * *

 **A/N:** Title comes from Round Here and chapter titles from August and Everything After both by Counting Crows. This was so emotional to write, if you could favourite/comment that would really mean a lot to me. Thank you.


	2. 1989-91

**A/N:** More regular updates and shorter chapters would call for more forward planning on my part. So before reading this, you might want to go and re-read part one because it's been so long. This chapter wraps up the time hopping *sigh of relief*, going from 17th November '89 to the 'present' (4th January '91).

Even though 'Divorce Court' 3x08 is set around Halloween, I'm using its airdate because that fitted in nicely as that week's issue of BAR included a powerful spread of all the AIDS related deaths in that year.

* * *

 **1989-91 / waiting here for Jesus on my knees**

Jesse wakes with the ghost of an elbow against his ribs, waiting for dreams to be sewn in. He hasn't slept this well in months and he reaches for him, unconsciously comfortable, but not without the momentary memory checking of the night before: clothes, check – sheets uncreased, yes – the taste of toothpaste and tears in his mouth. These tell-tale signs are enough to let him rise from the sexless bed, only his bones betray him; aching, the skin around his fingernails flaky as they stretch out for the alarm, land on his knees against the shock of the cold floor.

It is ( _thanks, bob… winds looking to pick up, 10 to 15… mph across the north_ ) the tinny voice of a newscaster ( _7:30am on the dot here in salt lake_ ), which entices a morning bout of agonies – to be blocked out by triple doses of _Tylenol_ when Jesse finally manages to trip into the bathroom. He realises that Joey is not there, his clothes stripped from the closet and in his suitcase instead. He thinks how strange that is. His head hurts like a hangover from the whiskey he didn't drink last night; they drove all day – arrived at the motel – argued – and? Nope. Nothing. He turns up the radio. _(january 4_ _th_ _, folks… thank golly it's friday)._

Stripping down in front of the kitchen mirror and hoping Joey doesn't come back, Jesse begins the ritual of his a.m. checks: a little discolouration on his legs but it doesn't seem to be getting worse, no marks yet. He hums the jingle they'll be pitching in less than two hours and puts a piece of the gum, pink and white bacon stripes, into his mouth before spitting it out in disgust and stepping onto the bathroom scales – he's only lost a pound (or perhaps two). Maybe it's the light or the way he catches himself in the mirror as he takes a swig of water and leaves the faucet on, but he remembers. There's no meeting. They're going home. _Shit._

By the time Jesse is sat on his bed (jeans and t-shirt from yesterday, head in his hands), Joey comes through the door, trailing the smell of grease after him, neither of them bothering to call out, and puts the brown paper bag down on the nightstand before hauling their cases and coats into the car, by himself, "two quarter pounders with cheese and a diet coke, come on, Jess, it's the only thing you've eaten in weeks."

Up until Austin, Jesse rests with his head in the crock of his elbow and Comet's blanket on his knees. Different towns pass. Joey pays tolls and eats _Tootsie Rolls_. The same tape is turned over, rewound every fourty-three minutes as it has been since '82, its yellow-green-blue-red cover lost somewhere. Disco and one solitary Spanish love song on the long roads, Joey watches him sleep. He's barely more than a kid, in relative terms, because he started so young; walking down the street like James Dean, getting older men – maybe by twenty or thirty years – to buy him drinks. Joey wonders if he was partly to blame for the premature promiscuity, whether he broke something inside him other than his heart. He looks at his own lips in the rear view mirror as he rips off a wrapper with his teeth and spits it into the ashtray, then at Jesse's; their peach colour, his pouty bottom lip. The trees blow a different direction in every state. He changes gear and has his eyes on the road when words, strung out and raspy, bite at his ear – gravely tone of a sore throat, on top of that of sleep, making them hard to distinguish from the humming of the engine.

"Tom used to play this song all the time."

It is the first time Jesse has ever spoken spontaneously of their shared past.

"He made Jeff grow a moustache like Freddie Mercury, d'you remember?"

Joey remembers seeing him shave it off after the funeral service, passing the unwarranted widower tissues through a cubicle door. He remembers the reflected agony in his eyes when he had to tell his friend that Jesse just couldn't make it.

"What happened to him, Tom?"

A black cat (bad, bad luck) darts out. Joey slams on the brakes, glances at Jesse; his eyes are closed again, his chest barely rises inside his jacket, "Tom died, buddy, just after Pam."

"Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah."

* * *

A good hair day: perfect pH balance and sunshine outside. Jesse stares into his chocolate milk, trying to find it again. It was stupid; he'd been fine, just fine and let Joey ruin it.

Becky comes back with Danny after the show and for once they're not squabbling over tiny things that should have been wrapped up within an ad-break. She's wearing tight, tight jeans and her beloved gives her flowers. The two of them get groceries for a family meal and stop at a café to talk in vague terms about the future; Jesse has a strange sort of urgency about him and thinks fleeting about asking Rebecca Donaldson to marry him – not because they're in Nevada, not because he's trying to cling to her, he loves her. Could do the most mundane things by her side and they're still exhilarating somehow. She says, into the half moon on her black coffee, _you sure are smiling an awful lot today_ , _honey._ He loves her.

Passing friends, past friends (he can't be _friends_ with these white-on-white people) is not uncommon nowadays but he cannot stand their weary voices calling his name, holds his girlfriend's hand tighter and crosses the other side of the street. He's not a bad person; night after night their once smiling faces glare at him against the strobe eyelid light, he's really not something that would disgust his sister and make her spin like a circus wheel in her grave. Becky, ever having the sympathy of any award-winning journalist (whilst her co-host just has an empty shelf and apathy), shows the appropriate amount of concern for the ghouls whose eyes are never looked into anymore or calls returned, but Jesse knows that that wouldn't be the case if it were him, the macho boyfriend.

He didn't think – during those short days and long nights in Tennessee, motel rooms small and walls so thin the screams of other lovers bounced notches against his bedframe – that he could ever feel like this again because his heart was drained and soul exhausted, but now he regularly sits between ex-beau and current lady love with one knowing everything and the other being blissfully innocent. Joey has asked him more than once when he's going to tell her, and the answer is always _never, what are you, crazy?_ He's never loved before, never will again, Rebecca Donaldson is his one and only; _no, joe, don't look at me like that._

Being a little too vain, sat at the kitchen table, he truly believes his brother-in-law's best friend is in love with him two years too late when he ruins his day – hair, weather, all lost in printed pages.

"Have you seen it?"

Joey comes in from the backyard, carrying as much grace as a prima ballerina on narcotics, obviously excited about having lasagne for dinner and, however happy, Jesse can't be bothered to look up, "no, Joseph, I haven't seen your Popeye hat. Ask Steph, I –"

Their eyes penetrate his skin, crawling to scratch away at his hollowing bones. Pages of young faces and the trademark moustache that makes Jesse shudder still and both of them have tastefully avoided. Joey puts a hand on his shoulder, only for him to shake off. It feels like staring into a communal grave, body pyre set to burn, "all this year?" he whispers in a tone which would be inaudible if Joey weren't so in tune with him, even though it was a rhetorical question. They're all dead. Every one of them. Dead.

Jesse folds it back neatly, pushes the pages of _The Bay Area Reporter_ away and says nothing for a very long time. Suddenly he can hear Pam's voice, her pleading, her bargaining with him to go to the doctor but he'll never be like those men; just a face, a statistic. He is not sick.

The paper slips from underneath him, long fingers obscuring black eyes and white teeth, Danny, "this for recycling?"

Anger floods through his veins and Jesse can't stop shaking, (Joey's hand on his shoulder again as he stands up, grip rather like a restraint than any comfort), he snatches it back before ironing the cover against his chest, "no – it's got an ad for Elvis slippers at the back."

Danny gazes, open mouth, as though his brother-in-law's about to bite his head off and get blood all over his clean floor, he steps down from the bleached parapet with a sigh, "jeez, Jess, what's gotten into you?"

"Jesse, you're overrating –"

The salad is being tossed so ferociously that Joey has to take away from him; lettuce leaves plastered on the sink and tomato seeds right at the bottom of the bowl. Any concern Jesse had about his health ten minutes ago has been replaced by the bitterest betrayal; it was bad enough his sister thinking he was a whore but _Joey,_ his first and last true friend in the world? He wants to scream at him, punch him in the face, scream some more. But they're not alone and even the walls have ears in this house. He hates him. He hates him, hates him – the sooner Becky can leave _Wake Up!_ the better, they can go to LA – hell, Nebraska, and he'll never have to see the stupid blonde cock-sucker ever again.

He bundles the both of them into the laundry room, everyone is busy but Jesse puts the dryer on just in case or for dramatic effect, "get off your fucking high horse, Joey."

"I'm not –"

"Don't act like you're better than me," Joey worries that Jesse's going to cry because of the way his throat is contracting under his collar, fighting hard to shout through the aroma of lavender and clementines, "I fucked around, this is San Fran-fucking-sisco."

He stares at him blankly. There's some commotion coming from the girls' room, Joey thinks he should go check in on them but then – out of the blue – he is acutely reminded that he is not their father. It's either this or Jesse's words, their pointedness at _him_ , that make Joey feel as though he's just been stabbed in the abdomen, "why can't we just have a conversation like normal people, Jess?" he is hurt, it's like he's falling, open-wounded knee, into a big black hole, "why does everything have to become this huge deal with you?"

"Because," Jesse pauses, kicks the dryer as if his aggravation wasn't obvious enough – it stops, it splutters and for a second they stand in silence, worrying that it might actually be broken and Danny might actually kill them with a clothespin, it starts again – "'cause we ain't _normal_ people, this whole _thing_ ain't normal."

It shouldn't hurt so much, he shouldn't be so irrationally angry but it does, he is. Joey can easily read the subtext, _what the fuck are you doing here anyway? we don't need you, stop acting like we're your family, are you that pathetic? you're just some pervert who lives in the basement_ , even if there wasn't any. An unfamiliar venom fuzzes in his veins, hasn't felt like this since his dad tried to get him to go into the military, it all comes tumbling out, "no-one forced you to suck every limp dick that was thrust at you. I can count on one hand – Patty, Patty and you."

The other man's features are caught between amazement and pure, absolute animosity, his face going the same dark grey as his shirt, he goes to open his mouth, to argue but Joey closes the gap between them, speaks in a tone that could be considered menacing if it were anyone else in the world, ever.

"I know ten of the guys on that list, Jesse, more in the hospital," he pokes a finger into the small triangle of exposed skin and goddamn, despite everything, it would be so easy to kiss him right now, "you would too. I'm not the one who abandoned all their friends."

Jesse backs away, catching his shoulder blade on the archway into the living room, "fuck you, man, fuck you," and does up all the buttons up to his neck, "it's not like that and you know it."

A battalion of footsteps interrupts them, coming around them in all-different directions; DJ and Stephanie running down the stairs, shouting at each other and for their dad, and then the man himself coming up from their office where he'd been show planning with Becky. Joey flattens himself against the other wall so he doesn't see him.

They wait until the shouting stops for Joey to pass Jesse on his way into the living room, "yeah?" points in the direction of the bathroom, "go take a look at yourself before calling me high and mighty."

Jesse goes over to Joey's basket of laundry with the childish intention of crumpling everything up or putting a red sock in with his whites but he just keeps looking at them until his eyes burn with the hot, gut-retching tears that are pooling in them, until he can't see anything for a good few time-stopping minutes. Something strange snaps him back into focus, something purple amongst the baseball jerseys and Bill Crosby sweaters. The shirt Joey let him borrow that New Year's Eve; he must have found it at the bottom of the closet (with old _Batman_ comics and grade school yearbooks) when Danny's date with a girl from the station didn't go well and Jesse's room was annexed for a complete (and completely compulsive) clean. Jesse wonders if Joey remembers how it came to be there, the fabric smells of him again; the strange mix of the two of them pulling Jesse's heart apart as he shoves it down into his own hamper.

"Jess, honey, you okay?"

A small part of him must have been expecting Joey because _Becky_ 's wide, sad blue eyes make the pain hurt in such a deeper, unexplainable way. He smiles around teeth that suddenly feel too big for his mouth, they chatter as his tears are wiped away, "it's just – just this new detergent," and it feels, as Becky looks at him tenderly, like he is the worst fucking liar in the world.

Joey is stretching out his sore muscles on his bed when Jesse comes, whistling down the stairs. He makes a point of not looking at him and his perky smile, still high off getting to play judge; he reminds reeling from yesterday and it's not like losing a race on local TV has helped at all – now _every_ part of his body and soul is agony.

Jesse doesn't seem to be getting the message because he dares to speak; the boy didn't graduate high school but Joey has always given him some credit: "bought you a cup of coffee," and when this doesn't provoke a reaction he resorts to pouring salt further into the wound, "you look good in those shorts, by the way."

A laugh tears itself away from Joey's lungs, it sounds bitter and tired and from a different time entirely so it catches both of them off guard. He takes the olive branch in the caffeinated guise of his Bullwinkle mug and puts it down next to the phone. Jesse looks trashed; a one-hundred-metre run shouldn't do that to a guy, Joey wants to wrap his arms around him and put him into bed right now. He tells himself it's stupid, it's just because yesterday's big print headline is still at the forefront of his mind and he's sleep deprived. "Look, I could really use a shower, so –"

When he goes to stand up, Jesse is in front of him, goes to take his hands but thinks (thank god) better of it, "Jojo," it's an attempt to be light and playful, should be laughable, "I'm real sorry about what I said –" and as Joey moves off, says _it's fine, jess,_ the idiot grabs his sleeve, and he could damn well cry because he just wants to be alone, "did you mean – yesterday – about Patty – Patty and – and – me?"

There's a beat.

"Yeah."

"Well, shit."

They sit on the edge of the bed. Their hands in their laps. Eyes anywhere but on each other. Joey thinks that he must have some really deep-seated issues that the psychologist he saw one time in the fourth grade didn't pick up on. Maybe this house is alive; an evil entity built on a Native American bonfire mound, not actually _allowing_ him to leave. Or maybe he's just been watching too many straight-to-cable horror movies. He can almost hear the clogs of Jesse's brain whirring as the breathing beside him gets faster, slower, faster again.

It's moments like this they've spent hours and days doing everything possible to avoid, which at times seems ridiculous, but then they'll be forced to induce collections of seconds that feel like small forevers, in which the whole course of the future could be changed on the turn of a dime. But then, just like that, as quickly and as slowly, one of the girls will come along and claim it for their piggybank. This time, it rolls all the way down Roosevelt's nose.

"You think it's easy for me, huh?" Jesse jumps up. The bedroom of your former – god, what even are they to each other? – sure is a stupid place to have your office. Joey follows him wearily with his eyes as he takes anxious strides across the room, "reading about it, knowing what I used to be like?"

There is something terrifying about this hushed hysteria; the way his arms are flailing, fingernails scraping through his hair with reckless, uncharacteristic abandon. He just wanted to shake him up a bit, make him think about things Jesse has pushed to the back of his mind but are still there and could, Heaven forbid, very much _be_ there. Joey stands up, feeling bad, "whoa, Jess, calm down."

Joey has seen Jesse Katsopolis cry before but never like this, never so violently that Jesse has cup his hands over his mouth to muffle the shuddering gasps, that it feels as though this could be the thing that causes whole wars across nations to break out, and Joey can only await the aftermath.

"I'm scared, alright? I'm so damn scared, sometimes I think that alone's going to kill me," Jesse falls back into his desk chair against the weight of his quiet omission. Joey is at his side, on his knees, wanting to do something, anything to heal what's hurting him, "I feel disgusting."

"Jesse," he stares down at the carpet, swallowing down the anger hearing his friend say that spikes up in him, "you are _not_ disgusting. I'm sorry, last night, I shouldn't have –"

He plays a foul move; Jesse curls a finger under his chin, forcing Joey's unguarded eyes to look in his as he says, devoid of all hope, as though accepting in his subconscious that this is what's going to kill him, "but I _am_ ," and his fingers linger on his face as Joey shudders, Jesse watching waves go through him.

The metaphorical dime glints in the midday light out of the corner of Jesse's eye, reminding him to come back to life, because right now they could drift into negative time space (where Beckys don't breathe and sisters are alive), their lips inch towards each other – static, a little up, a little down – and that would fix nothing or everything. For once time in his life, Jesse doesn't want to live on the dangerous side and find out. He whispers, "I wish the past would disappear," and lays his hands on Joey's chest to push/pull him away apologetically, "I love Becky."

A blush rises in Joey's cheeks as Jesse's touch crumbles away, the words painstakingly inching through him. Joey feels ridiculous, he scrambles to his feet, of course Jesse never loved him, he was stupid to even let himself entertain the idea; if his own father can't even love him, how can the most beautiful man he – no, anyone – has ever seen?

He goes to shower finally and Jesse sits with his head, hands hanging over the back of the chair in an effort to regain composure. But there's a shout of _Uncle Jesse! Joey!_ and then three girls looking at them from the foot of the stairs, all blonde hair and hunger. They want breakfast (pancakes, waffles, cookies), they are starving. Another day starts again. One passes into the other. It will take a year for Jesse to take every quarter of his loose change into the doctor's office and change everything.

* * *

Things start to fall apart around Sacramento.

Since Reno, Jesse has talked of nothing but Rebecca Donaldson, and the gas tank is low. Joey finally snaps under the strain

He's been driving ten hours straight – when they set out this morning, he decided to take the route over the breasts of Nevada instead of skimming the hairline; adding an extra forty miles and plenty of long roads to mull over, wanting to bury down the thoughts of _Jesse sick, Jesse dying_ by burning rubber. When he was still running on adrenaline and his partner on the passenger side was sleeping. Now, with the rush hour traffic of a lowering horizon, it is all too much to bear.

Even though Joey would never admit it, tiredness is only one of the two demons at play in his automobile. After being reminded of their friend's death, Jesse asked, out of his own morbid curiosity, about Tom's funeral and Joey – flicking through his back catalogue of the last five years, and really finding nothing about that particular occasion – had simply told him in sapid tones that what makes funerals so sad is that they're all the same; a guy loses the love of his life and in compensation is given an honorary mention of 'roommate', but then Joey steps on the brake too quick and the words come back to hit him in the face.

It's as though he already feels the twist in his gut that he will feel in months or years when Becky is being consoled and scrutinised with sympathetic eyes, and Joey is stood in the corner, no-one waiting on the steps outside, no draughty house to go back to, no jam to eat and lips to kiss it off of.

Jesse just keeps talking.

This pain ( _Becky, Becky, Becky_ ) is unbearable.

Joey pulls over into a _Texaco_ station. The tape needs to be rewound. He forces a smile at the teenager's wanting to wash the windscreen.

"Are you mad at me?" Jesse says in such outraged voice that that in itself is enough to make a lump rise in Joey's throat, as he reaches across to get his wallet out of the glove compartment, because he just doesn't get it.

"I'm not mad at you, Jess, I just need to get some gas," he gets out, fills up, presses loose change into the greasy's boy's hand, and goes inside.

Jesse kicks the stereo so hard that the tape is spat out and sent spiralling onto the back seat. He groans and is gone.

* * *

Silk and mark-up champagne, Becky's been kissing his neck since the cab slopped down Girard Street – where, she murmurs hot against his skin, they do spend too much of their time together – and they're wrapped in half-light and unfamiliar seclusion. That makes it all the more delicious; trying to supress their giggles, taxi driver tuned into talk radio, Jesse's hand running up the open cut hem of her dress while he looks out the window, feigning nonchalance until she tugs gently at his earlobe with her teeth.

He must be on cloud ten right now, dares not kiss his fiancée lest his mouth break from smiling, this is better than antidepressants and Vitamin X put together; neon signs brighter, heart dancing like he's running on love and the smell of Chanel alone. He probably could, Rebecca Donaldson is going to marry _him_ , would run in the road and shout about it if her lips weren't tingling and wet and warm, and everything he's ever wanted in the world. She only has to take regular breaks to laugh because her betrothed is saying _I love you, I love you_ again and again the whole ride back to her apartment. They're having a slumber party and he didn't even to pretend to pack his pyjamas.

Jesse doesn't know whether Becky catches the light from amber lampposts or casts it. Only she shines like the moon through a thousand diamonds rings, suspended, unsold, shifting. Her eyes ultraviolet as the two of them practically thrown to the curb as soon as they arrive because the driver can't go fast enough, accepting the uncounted fistful of dollar bills and nickels that's handed to him.

They don't speak as Becky goes through her purse looking for her keys, comfortable in the knowledge that beyond the door is a kitsch Eden. He fidgets beside her until the lock clicks and she pauses to put her hand to his forehead, face scrunched up in mock concern, "you look delirious, Jess."

"I am," he grimaces before sweeping her up into his arms, "with happiness," placing a kiss on the tip of her nose and nudging the door open with his foot.

This makes her screech loud enough to make the net curtains opposite twitch and kick one of her shoes into the potted aspidistra on her porch. Jesse stares at her bemused, squinting to see the seriousness in her face as he is lead backwards into the house, "you can't do that."

The floral patterns make Jesse's head whirl with a flick of a switch, "why not?"

Becky takes off his blue dinner jacket she'd been wearing, more for the scent of him than any real warmth – the distance from the cab to inside was no more than five paces – but he must be the dumbest and luckiest guy in the world for the way she grins at him before turning away to hang it up in the closet, "we're not married yet; you'd jinx it."

It occurs to Jesse that he might have to wait months or even years to marry her. The very thought ties a knot in his throat because that would be torture, all the pomp and ceremony seem ridiculous in the shadow of his undying love, "can't we just go to Tahoe and get married right now?"

"Don't start that again."

Night falls in loops and vines around Becky's glass veranda. They sit or stand, sip the scotch she saves for the parents who never visit because when Jesse asked whether he should call the enigmatic Mr Donaldson, a laugh had trailed off behind her as she went to pour it into crystal glasses, sadness and injustice mixed in the spirits. They stare at the stars, say nothing and sweet everythings. It's as if the engagement has metamorphosed into physical form between them; a figment of the coming months where – away from everyone else – it can just be them, like this, at least for a while. If the future's a whole entity now, it must have a lifespan and so will, beside the bridegroom, die prematurely.

She looks at him in the mirrored darkness, opens her mouth about to speak but downs her drink instead; he is mesmerised by the reflected curve of her throat when she says unexpectedly, "it must be hard for you, Pam not being here."

Jesse frowns before turning his chin towards the sky because yeah, it really, really hurts. When he was in Tennessee, he used to look up at the stars on his way back to the motel with only his shadow to accompany him; one would glint off the rim of his glasses like a wink and he'd think _ah, there's Pammy, looking down on me._ But he doesn't tell Becky that because over time he's learnt just not to think about it, her, anything, otherwise it would kill him being in the house, passing her favourite cooking supply store on the way home from school, seeing those girls everyday. And to think of her is, nine times out of ten, to think of how cruel he was to her those last few years, all the good memories in Danny's photo albums have been pushed out, for the times he slammed a door in her face, hung up the phone, didn't make another family dinner. It hurts like Hell.

He laughs and Becky nearly jumps out of her skin, snapping her neck around to look at him. There's a shooting star – that's a big thumbs up, that's a huge _you got it, dude!_ This is the last thing Pam would ever have imagined happening, she'd be so happy, she's probably having a party right now so he laughs a little too hard, "yeah, _yeah_ ," and wipes the tears out of his eyes with a sigh, "guess I don't think about her as much as I should."

" _Jesse_ ," Becky's eyebrows are arched in concern as though he's bound to break at any moment, touches his arm like he's something delicate in passing, "we don't owe anything to the past."

For once his fiancée is wrong, he owes his sister a thousand sorrys, Joey too – damn, he knocks back the scotch – he promised himself he wouldn't go down this road tonight, this is completely not the time or place to contemplate the way their glances caught when Papouli toasted the happy couple; Jesse was waiting for some blue morning months away, preferably raining, when he could feel the guilt for putting such a crestfallen look on his face. And then, as if on cue, the sultry strings of _Can't Help Falling in Love_ come up and strangle him from behind until all Jesse can see is blue frosting, a purple shirt.

He puts his glass down too heavily on the davenport and steps down into the living room where Becky is stood, hands on her hips, looking put-out that this didn't cheer him up. But then he smiles his best Uncle Jesse smile, says he has a better idea and they look through her record collection together; battered LPs (some they would have played at their wedding, some she and Joey will choose for his funeral) until they find the perfect one, push the table and a plastic plant out of the way, and they're dancing, "now every time we hear this song," he whispers into her into her hair, "we'll think only of this beautiful moment."

"Jess, you're such a romantic."

"This is going to be the best wedding ever, Cousin Daphne's going to be so jealous."

They get the tempo to just the right temperature for Jesse to suggest that they move upstairs when he wonders despairingly whether she would even notice if they didn't have sex tonight, and a throw cushion digs into his back, "that's not the only reason you're marrying me, is it?"

She smiles like that and it really wouldn't be so bad if he took her right there on the couch. But it's like their first time all over again, and he's planned this night in his head so many times since he saw her – white blouse, videotape in hand – and decided he would marry her. He wants this to be as slow and as loud as possible if she'd only stop talking and let him show her. Everything would be so impossibly easy when she's smiling like that, "I sort of love you too," and is kissing him like this, lips between teeth.

They're as far as the chaise longue when Jesse can't stop grinning. She wobbles on his lap at the shock of his mouth pulling away, a small moan of protest breaking the air between them, and it's more than his heart will allow. He's never loved before, "it'll be great," the euphoria makes his voice tremble, he'll never love again, "we'll have all our friends and family there, those little place cards, yellow lilies –"

Becky draws back, "you mean red," the words catch on her tongue in a way which would be insultingly condescending coming from anyone else, she bats him off as he tries to kiss her again, " _surely_."

"No, yellow."

"Red!"

"Orange."

No condoms in the drawer. Some higher power must really hate his guts because it physically hurts him to leave her on the bed (shirt crumpled on the floor, pantyhose over nightstand) to go into the en-suite, wanting to pray but finding he's forgotten how to, reaching for the box of _Durex._ There's no warning when it happens, it's just a quick glance in the mirror and they're there; those black and purple spots that used to be plastered on posters on the inside of drugstore windows years ago, _GAY CANCER_ in bold lettering underneath. They're there; he blinks and they won't go away. His lungs are in his throat; he can't breath, falls onto the toilet seat. The ceiling tiles are coming down around him, he would scream if his heart were beating.

 _This is not real._

 _This can't be real._

 _This is not –_

Becky knocks on the door, "sweetheart, are you alright? I heard a crash."

He doesn't reply, flooded by white light, the sound of gasping echoing against the shower walls.

Tries the handle, "Jess, honey, answer me please."

The nightmare fades away, Jesse glances into the mirror again and he looks like a guy who just got engaged; flushed face, eyes all pupils, hair a little array but that's okay. He's drunk too much, had to sober up. Everything is fine. He smiles and shakes of the last of it, opens the door to a fiancée who flows into his arms without a second thought. They'll talk about this day before he dies and laugh about it because even then Rebecca Donaldson is right by his side – her heart is a compass, she will say as they are kept up by terrors at night, and he's North.

* * *

"I'm walking home."

"If you're going the whole ninety miles, I've got some old hiking boots in the trunk."

Joey's got his head hanging out the window, trying to convince him to get in the car. It's dark now. He wants to drive on. He's tired too, "get in," tries to do his best Danny impression but comes off callous somehow, and thinks better of it, "come on, Jesse, you're acting like a little kid."

Jesse looks over at him – squinting, scuffing his shoes in the sand, sulking, "am not."

"Are too."

Stephanie and Michelle are easy to win over; just a cookie, or a traffic light lollipop in extreme cases, but Joey's forked out a whole dollar for Jesse, "I got you a comic book," and waggles it at him with a smile.

A snort, walks faster in frustration, "gee, thanks, Pop."

He's stopped the car, "wow, you get to meet Batman's best friend!" and Joey marvels melodramatically at the front cover, "Jess, you've _got_ to read this."

When Jesse leans against a power pole to sigh it's as good an invitation as any for Joey to finally get out. He thinks about when Stephanie was born and there was so much hope; it felt, that night, like everything was right in the world, as if it was just a matter of time for fate to fall into place and one of them to hit the go button. He should have told Jesse he loved him right there on the hospital floor but he thought it could wait – would everything be different if he had? He's spent the last ten hours considering a hundred could haves, should haves, would haves. Jesse had the flu.

Jesse's eyes are soft when he glances up at him, through his mop of black-silver hair, "you're mad at me, why?"

No vehicles pass them. One lone ranger looks somewhere far off for his imaginary buffalo.

"I'm that guy, Jesse, I'm the roommate," he stares at the white crescent moon on his sneakers like they're the greatest fashion statement on earth so he can't see his old friend laugh at him, tone low so he doesn't scream, "do you know how much that hurts?"

He can hear the realisation being etched into Jesse's face, the words fading around his stupid, perfect lips, "I'm the – of your – Joseph, what we had, you and me – it's ancient history."

"I wasn't – I didn't –" the sentence can't be finished without lying and starting something else entirely; if Joey brings up what Jesse said last night, Jesse will argue that he didn't and dig through the sands of time for a dead and buried comeback. It's so fucking cold, can't they just go home? They could have made it back for meatloaf night if it wasn't for this.

"Do you know how much it _hurts_ ," Jesse says suddenly, shrilly but not illogically, "when you tell someone you love them and they don't say it back?"

Joey heaves to draw air into his lungs, rubs a hand against the back of his neck. He gets a sinking feeling in his hungry stomach that they could be here for a long time, or until the cop tells them to move along, and grasps at straws for a good reply, he wishes he had a way with words, "I did."

Jesse goes to scoff but there are too many tears in his eyes and it come out as a sob, "yeah, well, it doesn't sound the same three months later," his voice has got the strings of someone on the brink of mental breakdown and Joey wants to hug him but he can't, can't touch him, "I wanted to spend my whole life with you, man, I would have done anything – then Pamela died and I realised that I couldn't wait anymore – give up all my time trying to forget someone I thought didn't love me."

And Joey says, "I know," because he would have unhinged the Sun if Jesse had asked.

* * *

Christmas hangs around like a curse in this house, all cinnamon scented and commercial. Whether it's Joey humming carols in the living room or Michelle cajoling any one of them into giving her cookies, he cannot escape. He looks up from his scotch on the rocks at the limp bunch of mistletoe Danny taped above the sink for himself and Cindy; Becky's back in Nebraska, leaving him again, somewhere in Middle America.

It's amazing what a late December night and three hours of talk radio can do to a mind. The effect similar to being – as Jesse will discover – caught between being actively sick, medically diseased but functioning and _dying_ in the continuous tense. When you make the lazy and uncomplicated transgression from living to existing; when the weight of human activities is taken out of the equation and thoughts have free rein to swim around your body, deep dark noughts and crosses kind of thoughts. Only occasionally it likes to come test the waters, see how warm the cancer is. Only Jesse doesn't feel it yet. All he feels is gulp-gulp-sip.

Beer helps keep the weight on and the spirits to forget why the former is required; Jesse's never been a drinker. Any other Christmas Eve, he'd be out there driving the car, looking at all the pretty houses with the fairy lights on and the kids in the back. Laughing at Danny laughing at Elvis' Christmas Album and how it loops on repeat. He could go and get it but it's an unsightly forty degrees outside and Jesse's already shivering under his two t-shirts, old sweatshirt and scarf. Scotch warms him up from the inside and ice soothes the pain in his throat, it's hard to take aspirin.

Becky did not leave him – she wouldn't if she knew how he's feeling, the tests, the hospital visits but she can't. 1991 cannot come quickly or slowly enough; at first the New Year wait seemed like a blessing because he already knows the results and their morbid meaning, and it's easier to pretend something off record, unwritten is not happening. But when it gets like this – him and single malt – he feels stuck; the little life he may or may not have left is on pause. He never thinks any further than the end of the bottle. She went to see her family alone because her fiancé would freeze in the Siberian temperatures of Omaha but Becky thinks her boyfriend is a bastard and hasn't spoken to him since they put her bags, arguing, into a taxicab. He deserves her eventual explosion and whatever the doctors (masked and sterilised this time, of course) will say to him.

He hears his voice before his step so Jesse is unprepared, in his fragile state of mind, for a jolly, jostling Joey who is equally caught off guard by the scene in front of him. His counterpart's cheeks are round and dimpled to his hollowed ones, body strong and a little lardy compared to Jesse's wasting away which is noticed as he gets up to fix Joey a drink and himself another. The older man stares at him in a way Katsopolis men should not be looked at, with worry, worry and pity.

"You're looking thin."

Two glasses clink together and the ice tray creaks, if Joey doesn't want this other drink Jesse will have it without a doubt, "what are you doing home?"

"I wanted to put my Santa suit on before the others get home," there is a pause of heavy disapproval, "and help you clean up apparently – you've lost weight."

Jesse moves to sit on the countertop, damp with condensation, but doesn't raise his gaze; he doesn't want to see the festive flush replaced with the grey he knows is there. He rakes his brain, rakes his brain for anything to say, "I found the fairy for the top of the tree, Comet had –"

"Jesse."

He looks up and even without his glasses can see tears prick at the corners of Joey's kind eyes, so he cannot lie, "okay, yeah – maybe a bit but –"

Thirty-dollar scotch is forgotten but the radio murmurs on. Joey blinks and Jesse sighs, waiting a moment to remove his scarf because of what is concealed underneath and he cannot bear to see Joseph Gladstone cry.

He doesn't, thank God, only curses softly and catches his breath. The second Jesse shudders at his neck exposed, Joey's fingers are at the base of it, running over the hairs that have stood to attention at the unexpected contact and down to the bumps that protrude, "damn it, Jesse, look at you."

"I'm –"

"Don't you dare think about lying to me," his tone is soft but angry, the back of his other hand is cool against the fever rising on Jesse's forehead, "how long?"

There's a small fire of hesitation in Jesse's stomach; he knows that this is not a good idea but that only makes it harder to prevent himself from melting, completely, in Joey's touch. He says, "not tonight," defiantly not the best tactic, perhaps being upfront about it would be easier, his cheating at the game they play together, but tomorrow is Christmas and Jesse so desperately needs Joey joviality. He sees the pain in his eyes, its intimacy, and does not stop the tears that start to flow, torrents of them, down his dappled cheeks, "please."

Joey, in turn, goes to remove his hand but the more he thinks about it, considers this moment when it is just the two of them alone, something they've spent three years attempting to avoid, his limbs morph into the ghost of a caress – palm cupping Jesse's jaw, digits dangerously close to his hip.

Complacency can hide a multitude of things and lead to others; they've lost their poker faces over time, the both of them, even though they still manage to keep their cards close to their chests. Never, ever touching, that's the million dollar spin, but careful moves into flirtation; bluffing their way around the supermarket, lingering as they pass the salt shaker over hundreds of meals. Michelle and her little ghost are their scapegoat; omnipresent as they come up with jingles, crack jokes because her squeals and demands don't allow time for anymore than business conversation. She sits between them in the Mustang, at dinner every day. Now she is not here.

All that hangs between them now is a bunch of mistletoe.

It starts innocently. If the girls came in, they could blame it on Jesse's superstitious nature, tradition made for high school dances and office parties. It is Joey's mouthful of apologies, their shared sorrow becoming one suddenly, tasting each other's sadness. Hard liquor and cough syrup. Cardamom and those butterscotch candies Danny keeps in his glove box.

It is Jesse who ups the stakes, puts all their chips, cards and showgirls on the table, breaking the golden rules, taking off his visor. Who, as soon as there is a pocket of air between them, a breath, closes it because that millisecond feels like forever. He is rough in response to Joey's reluctance. He wraps his legs around his waist, draws out his desperation with his tongue. If this were any other time, if they were just two guys, Jesse would stop and say, _are you afraid to kiss me? I'm afraid to let you_ and Joey would shake his head. But there is a certain urgency: Jesse gasping, his back digging into the faucet and body being bundled up into familiar arms. They would giggle because they would never have left it this long, Joey would carry him upstairs and make love to him, and they are all too well aware of this. And this is why they stop before phone rings.

Joey kisses him again before wriggling away and going to answer it, tight-lipped and chaste, and Jesse can see in his face that this is _it_. Things have been different between them since he got engaged, longer silences, wry remarks loaded with pretext; just another one of Jesse conquests was fine, Joey had learned to deal with them and he liked Becky a lot, but there had always been quiet hope, a small amount of space for Jesse to leave her and run away with him instead. He's turned the page, finished the chapter.

Jesse lets the burning hot tingling stay on his lips until Joey's voice cracks and he turns around, his hand over the receiver, "it's Becky," and Jesse rubs the wetness away from his chin, its repercussions leaving him weak at the knees.

 _Hi, honey._

It is Joey who finally, after thirteen years, has the courage to take the book off the shelf.

 _Yeah, I love you too._

And close it on them.

* * *

Joey's earlier sleepiness was thrown out of the window with empty bags of chips somewhere around the Sacramento suburbs, spoken words and their salt lingering on the passenger seat. They walk around the block once, three times because neither of them will sleep tonight; might as well chase stars away together than be locked in separate rooms, different beds, watch the clock tick by as hours fade in sixty minute cycles of overthinking. Danny isn't expecting them back until tomorrow night anyway. Jesse is talking about when he was DJ's age would sit by his bedroom window on nights like this, watching some alley cats going at it on the neighbours' tin roof and writing songs about the girl he thought he was going to marry, _but_ , he is almost too quick to say, _wouldn't have worked anyway, Marissa Katsopolis doesn't really have a ring to it_ , because the argument has planted seeds of tenderness under their skin, which will later bloom in Jesse's hospital tubes.

It's midnight in San Francisco; a faint undercurrent of beats that neither of them can distinguish between hearing and memory because they are worlds away, traipsing through Honeybee streets and the park where families conjugate every Saturday morning. Instead of children paying homage to the monkey bars and on looking parents praying to deities while they do it. The past day rushes away and Joey is overtaken by childish enthusiasm; runs over to the big swing set, already in a steady rhythm of back and forth by the time Jesse catches up with him – huddled, leaning against the foundations, in his coat and Joey's old _Michigan State_ jersey, refusing to swing.

"You ride motorbikes, how much more dangerous can it be?"

"You know you're turning _thirty_ -four this year, right?"

He huffs and moves to sit in the empty seat beside Joey, mesmerised by the feeling of his locomotion as the night air is deflected by Joey's knees and whistles past his cheek. Jesse always imagined playgrounds after dark to be creepy, how rusty bolts would creek to a eerie tune of nursery rhymes, but there's a feeling he cannot place in this; an almost serenity in the chalkboard chapel, perhaps it's just the innocence of the place, but when he looks at Joey (moonlight–darkness), he no longer feels as though just a wisp of blonde hair could be enough to trigger an existential crisis.

He has – since being lured into a club by Gloria Gaynor's 1978 hit _I Will Survive_ – considered himself, for the sake his own sanity, two different people, with separate lives and purposes. There is firstly Daylight Jesse, the one who has now become Uncle Jesse: practical, guitar player, Disney Prince set of the mouth. He is deeply rooted in reality; goes to bed by midnight, pizza on a Friday, he was going to get married. The other is dead, decapitated in a car crash one May afternoon, Uncle Jesse says, but he lived on another plane entirely; only being fed by adoring fans, his world a tight circuit of discos and dances to which his very destiny had been charmed, because Hedonist Jess was not of this world, he was beyond its power. But Joey has been known to evoke an amalgamation of the two, Uncle Jesse and the ghost of boy he killed, whose haunting of his soul has begun manifesting in physical form since his engagement.

He begins to drag his heels back and forth against the gravel, moving more to separate himself from the moment than any actual movement, a far off look on his face, "we've never exactly been friends, have we, Joseph," it doesn't come out like a question, breathier than Jesse would have liked.

Joey slows, looks at him expectantly for a second, says, "no," and picks up speed again.

When he looks at him (up–down), Jesse realises he isn't seeing Joey through the interchangeable film of adoration or hate, he is seeing him as a stranger should; with curiosity and slight awe for a man who has given up so much to raise children not even related to him by blood. He will never be able to put into words how deeply he loves him (although they will both attempt to, during long Grecian mornings in a strange garden), but in the last twenty-four hours the feeling has shifted.

"Could we, you know, try being buddies?"

A smile passes him, "sure, Jess."

When he reaches out and touches Joey's hand to bring him back down to earth, the air doesn't become charged, sparks don't fly as their fingers slip easily together and Jesse doesn't feel disappointed. Uncle Jesse is a prerequisite of Hedonist Jess and Joey knows each of them intimately, which Jesse used to think of with all–consuming terror but suddenly it is comforting; the warmth of the other man's palm is a certainty, not an aphrodisiac because while it hums through his cold body, Jesse knows he is alive, he is present.

Joey clears his throat, "maybe you caught it just in time," it's a lame effort to be optimistic and in any other situation Jesse would have jumped at the opportunity to snap at him.

They sit like that for a long, long time, clouds covering the moon before Jesse unexpectedly speaks; Joey thought he had over stepped the mark, said enough to send spiteful remarks back in his face, but Jesse opens his mouth and embarks on his longest speech since Christmas 1988 when they were stuck in the airport, his words sticking with sadness to the walls of their glass box:

"When I was a kid – I was seven years old. My mom went out for the day and I broke her favourite bottle of perfume, I'm talking the real fancy stuff, and I remember hiding under my bed waiting to hear the key in the door. I had this biggest knot in my stomach; thought I was going to die. Not because she was going to freak out or take away my Elvis tickets – that was fine – the thought of having to see that look of disappointment on her face, not being able to go back," he takes a breath, they can see a church spire in the distance, "and every day now, I get that feeling and I just know."

* * *

 **A/N:** I feel bad for Becky, I really do, but things get a little bit better for her later on so stay tuned! Thank you, you precious ones who are following/reading; I love you, best friends forever.


	3. 1991

**1991 / dress you up in white satin**

 **A/N:** This chapter picks up four days from where the last chapter left off; it was supposed to be in the last chapter but a lot of stuff goes down in the three weeks included here and it would have just been too bulky. I used the age-old sitcom trope of everything happening super quickly and easily, and that's about where the similarities end. Things get pretty dark here but I promise there's so fluff too!

* * *

Jojo _–_

 _Packed girls' lunches. Gone apartment hunting_

 _with Beck. Back by dinner!_

– _Bon appetit, J_

When Jesse said the morning after they got back from Salt Lake City – after a night of walking, eating multi-coloured cereal by the glow of the _Home Shopping Network_ and sleeping two hours on the couch – that he was going to move out, Joey had just nodded and thought nothing of it. After all the stress of the morning school run is enough to tip over the edge, and it's Jess; the guy who's never followed anything through in his life, even Joey's writing most of the jingles and manning the phones in their partnership. He'd expected it to go the way of riding his motorbike on the roof of a building, jetting off to Rome with some Italian supermodel – all shouting and manic excitement and _yes now! right now!_ to then petering off to nothing around bedtime because Michelle can't find her piggy or Stephanie mastered a new _fifth grade_ jump rope routine and he can't miss this.

But here Joey is, with pancakes plastic wrapped on the countertop, the note that was stuck to them now between his fingertips, getting a sinking in his stomach. As he moves away so does the feeling, to make room for early morning mundanities: a hot pot of joe for Cold Joe, flicking through the family day planner while bagpipes drift over next-door's fence.

This will wake Danny; he will swing his legs over the side of the bed and into Tuesday's pants in one swift movement. Knock on everyone's door on the way down but today he will not smirk at the sound of a pillow being thrown and _go to hell, daniel_ because there will be silence. Whistling echoing against the wood panelling of the back staircase as he stoops, tall guy, and takes it in long strides, "hey, Jess already down?"

Joey looks up from obituaries in the morning paper, goes to smile but the phone rings. This is weird, this is strange, shouldn't feel like the cord is being wrapped around his throat but it does because no-one calls before 7:30 even on a school day and Jesse is not here. It's no more than a twinge, this thought, the same as when you're about to merge on the freeway; no amount of checking in the rear-view mirror will get rid of the half-a-second fear that some truck will come up and inexplicitly, invisibly hit you in the back. It would be too like Jesse to run before the starting horn, to exit before seeing the green sign.

Danny sighs into the receiver, looking about as mad as all hell. The vein will start popping out any minute but not the expression of someone whose brother-in-law just launched himself off Golden Gate Bridge, "that was the station," he hangs up, doesn't even check for lint, "Rebecca called in sick."

So Jesse obviously hasn't told him about moving out, if he had, Danny would probably having an aneurism right now, but he's damned if Joey's doing it for him. He surreptitiously scrunches the note up into a ball in his robe pocket as a cup slides across the breakfast bar, from one comrade to another, coffee is poured and creamer mixed in (french vanilla because it's as bad as _that_ ). Danny is staring into the steam for approximately twenty seconds before he has a revelation, "Jesse's not here, is he?"

There's a comforting rhythm of stamping feet and slamming doors above their heads. This is Joey's favourite time of day and it's losing its charm by the second; when he was a kid, he woke up at his father grunting through his morning exercises. By the time he got downstairs the house would be deserted, parents at work, so Young Joseph would grab a couple of Twinkies for breakfast and the money his mom left out before walking to Danny's – no one to ask if he slept well, what was on the lunch menu that day, wish him good luck on that Spanish test. He enjoys doing simple things, like keeping the mood light, defusing an argument or two because there's nothing worse than slamming the door on an angry house. So he smiles and starts warming the pancakes, "oh, you know these young couples nowadays –" (his back is turned, but he knows Danny is scowling at him) "they probably just wanted to spend a day at the beach, get matching tattoos –"

"In _January_? She is so unprofessional."

Stephanie comes down just in time to hear this, in her pink teddy bear two-piece and one sock, "Dad," she is holding her bare foot up, " _Becky_ wasn't the one who –" and hopping on the tiles, eyes light up at the sight of maple syrup on the table, "who spilled juice all over –"

The frown on her father's forehead gets deeper, if he's not careful it'll be imprinted there for the rest of the day, the wind will change and they've got a hula-hooper on the show today (why _is_ Danny so upset about interviewing her by himself? Or is it the principle? God, it'll that). He wouldn't be happy if they were giving away pints of ice cream at the supermarket because he was _planning_ on buying frozen yoghurt.

Joey tries his best not to laugh and hands him plates set perfectly on the table instead, but it is bad luck that the one day the whole family were at home to waste an hour at his expense was the day he felt up, on live TV, the Head of The Arts Council. Danny shouts, "thanks, Steph," as she disappears into the laundry room in search of her other sock; she won't find it there because it's at the bottom of DJ's backpack but _you're welcome_ boomerangs back.

Pistachios and peanut butter, the pancakes are ready, apples on the side, just as Danny remembers that Jesse is not there to help his youngest daughter get dressed (Joey was not going to remind him, he has principles too), so he drains his coffee and heads for the stairs, "Jess told me about the chewing gum people," – DJ elbows past him, disgruntled, handing her still hopping sister the lost sock – "I can't believe they still made you go all the way up there, that really sucks."

They're all sat down for breakfast – a tradition that goes back to Pam so it has to be squeezed in even if there's no real time for it – all of five minutes before Kimmy Gibbler comes in, yellow school bus outside, and the two school-bound Tannerinos leave in a flurry of homework reminders and shiny dime smiles. Danny follows, after checking his watch compulsively for the last ten sets of thirty seconds; as Becky is not here to pick him up this morning, he might as drop Michelle off at preschool. Joey refutes this, it will make Danny late, it's easier for him to do it (he is the one with nothing to do) but doting dad says it's fine and bundles his daughter, with his briefcase and car keys, into his arms.

The door closes and Joey is on the other side of it. The weighty silence fixing him to the seat of his chair, making it impossible to fill immediately with the clattering of plates and cutlery, the reassuring rush of water. First he has to endure it, the sense that he is completely and utterly alone, that Jesse is not here. Joey tells himself, out loud since there is no-one there to hear him, that he is overrating; the doctors said they were just running some tests, that it's just a high probability because Jesse just has the symptoms normally only seen in the late stages of an HIV infection – there is no red three letter stamp yet so Joey is overreacting. Overreacting. Definitely being melodramatic.

It's been four days and five nights since Jesse told him, this was due to come at any hour anyway but the force at which it hits his chest is unexpected because he's seen how the mornings are without Jesse and he already hates them, they're just a small pocket of the day. He is being dramatic, ridiculous as he sobs at the kitchen table of his college roommate but Joey is beyond caring so he doesn't. A world without Jesse would – would, _will_ – be unbearable.

* * *

 _Hermes Katsopolis DOB 08/19/1963_

 _Symptoms: Recurrent fever, insomnia, weight loss_

In fate's cruel way, they happen to fall on the same day, walking out of Danny's house and into Ward 86; Becky moving boxes of an old life into a new apartment and Joey waiting outside San Francisco General Hospital, wringing his hands, to receive the man who will unpack them. It is never good news when doctors call three times in two minutes, their professionalism clipped around the telephone cord. They never bring you here, _here_ to show off to dying men, the healthy specimen they could have been if it weren't for youth and lust and disco music.

 _Mr Katsopolis first came to see Dr A. in May of 1987 after his sister passed away. Fluoxetine hydrochloride was prescribed. Mr Katsopolis reported feelings of hopelessness and an increase in his pre-existing insomnia, and decided to take himself off the drug. At this time psychotherapy and a blood test to check his physical wellbeing were recommended, both the patient refused. Mr Katsopolis was also unwilling to disclose his history of sexual partners, using excuses that did not seem plausible._

Because the news reaches his eyes before crashing around the rest of his body, there is in them reflected despair so deep that it has already, in a few minutes, graded itself into one of morbid inanity; Jesse is fifteen years old and his sister is pulling him away from the place the other man just stood, his kiss burning – and from outside, twenty-year-old Joey can see the raised eyebrows and parted lips of a child because this is the very limit of injustice. So every limit after that night has predisposed another and this is why, upon hearing the words (which ought to demand salt-water tears and sore lungs), Joey is met with an expression of calculated neutrality.

It pours down. White lashings of rain that are supposed to drench you or fall into your heart lines, as though something is supposed to grow there; the Heavens themselves have opened, and Joey and Jesse look up at clouds in turn, willing them to close. They do not talk, they do not talk about the feelings that can be conveyed in a sigh, a side-smile, a nod. They keep walking, Joey's unmentioned car abandoned in the parking lot, along with the pretence of fetching lunch which Jesse had feed to his fiancée. Everything is over now; it is on paper; it is real.

 _Jesse has recently gotten engaged and has a promising career in advertising. Despite this, his understanding the severity of his situation seems to fluctuate somewhat although he states that he has known he was ill ever since a close friend died due to AIDS related pneumonia in 1987. He has been living with his brother-in-law and three nieces for the past three years but after his recent health scare, Jesse has decided to move into his own apartment. Jesse appears to be very anxious about this change though his affect could be described as apathetic overall. We have agreed on a trial of alprazolam._

The Giants plastered on a billboard halfway home slosh into conversation between their feet, neither of them thought to bring an umbrella. Joey keeps up a monologue from avenue to avenue, watching the streetcar go past. Jesse wishes he had the strength to cry torrents of tears in the downpour like an actor in those cheesy films, and a script to live by. How long has he got? How long until he becomes the face of another black and white statistic? – he breathes in. Looks at Joey's strong hand beside his mottled one. How easy it would be to say _, run away with me, we'll go to Greece, just you and me, live in my parents' villa, God please._ And how complicated that would make everything.

When they reach Jesse's apartment building, it is not these words that ring in his ears and echo in the quiet of the lobby. It smells of exhaust fumes and piss. Joey says he'll see him bright and early tomorrow, ready for business like nothing's wrong. He goes to hug him but thinks better of it and Jesse watches him away, smaller and smaller through the double doors, round the corner and gone. The game is up, all the players have dispersed. Wonders what they'll be doing at home, what they'll be having for dinner, if Stephanie's done her homework, if Michelle will miss him singing her the teddy bear song. He's got Becky upstairs; she'll be happy and waiting.

Jesse calls the elevator.

She's got the radio on and doesn't hear the latch fall, apartment rhythm at one hundred and ten beats per minute (just faster than his heart rate). It's the song that seemed to play in every bar, store, taxi after his sister died; it made Danny cry and Jesse think of Joey.

Becky appears in the doorway; she is so goddamn beautiful, "hi, honey, what did you get?"

The small corridor seems too long and too short, probably how a man on death row feels taking his final walk, half wanting it to be all over, half waiting for a pardon. Doctor's letter like a revolver or a bomb in his pocket, leather clad, strapped to his chest that makes it hard to breathe, ready to blow them all to smithereens.

When Becky walks towards him and they stand foot to foot, static makes him miss her cheek and stumble slightly. He smiles sheepishly, her eyes on him before she moves away, catches himself checking that the lettering on his t-shirt hasn't been replaced by big red numbers, counting down.

"Joey called and said you had to get a birthday present for DJ."

Her breath is against his ear now, hand closing softly around his bicep where muscle used to be, "yeah," - lips near his hair, stops to breathe in his scent of distant bleached corridors, fingers running - "I don't know," - so close, too close to those fucking lumps but - "something girly," they skip over them to skim up the side of his face, snap shut over his eyes like a case. He laughs in spite of himself, "what are you doing?"

They shuffle forwards while Becky shushes him, makes a joke about being his eyes (when, almost ten years to the day, Jesse wakes and realises he cannot tell whether it's day or night, whether the sun is shining, he remembers this and thinks how strange it is that she's still there but only this time he can't look through the bands of her fingers, everything is a fuzzy grey and she doesn't pull away with a childish _ta-da!_ ).

There's throw cushions on the threadbare couch, a lamp next to it on a box marked MEMORIES. The light comes in. _I couldn't find any vases_ , red roses in a beer bottle as a centrepiece on the kitchen table. Elvis poster on the wall. She's wearing his pink shirt, dark tendrils come loose around the collar, bandana and blue jeans.

In one second, he wants just this; this women, her expensive perfume and grandmother's stew, the American dream he forgot about in midnight streets. To take back every unused condom, every white tab on his tongue – tell himself this simple coming home will make him feel better than any of that ever did. Don't worry, this is coming. One day happiness will enough. But then there's a change of tempo, another second and Jesse realises that he's going to die. He realises that even if he is a typical textbook case with a ten year incubation period, he cannot look back on 1980 and think about every face he say in a seedy light of lust to wonder whether they were _the one_. That year, when John Lennon died and they went to Santa Rosa in an obnoxious family-sized Volvo – Jesse, Joey, Danny, DJ and Pam – on a picnic, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with illness festering inside him.

She's talking about the price of meat as he pushes bits of steak around his plate. His gaze falls around the corner of her eye so it looks as if he's listening, as if he's sincere and looking into them. This apartment block has a lot of windows for a place that's built on a foundation of stones and around people who aren't ready to live in glasshouses. Becky's engagement ring clinks against her knife. They're trying to get someone on the show. He thinks about the first time he saw her; he took off his sunglasses and her eyes met his, a tidal wave under his heart _; I'm going to marry this girl._

When he touches her hand, it feels like his fingers could melt into her skin, "Rebecca," Jesse says, "before I met you, I was some motorbike riding, insect killing kid – I had a mullet, for God's sakes! – now look at me: got my own place, a great career in advertising, even better hair and the best fiancée a guy could possibly ask for," he swallows thickly and focuses on the upturned wick of her mouth, a look in her eyes that he cannot read, "I just want you to know how much I love and admire and value you."

She glances from him to the shadow of the door over his shoulder and back again, her lips curling up into a mock smile of mock derision "you're not about to leave me, are you, Jess?"

Becky cuts open boxes with a caving knife and Jesse counts crows from the couch, his knees tucked under his chin, right into a ball; he's too big and too small and too much and not enough. He feels completely apart from himself, all his personas have peeled away from him; he can't be Uncle Jesse because Uncle Jesse is strong and kind and gets things done. He's weak from the fifteen arduous hours of being awake (bright lights, bleach, every last tear of hope gone). What he's about to do to Becky is horrific and he can't bring himself to even start a train of conversation because that will still leave plenty of warning signs and stops to get off at, jumping onto the tracks doesn't seem so bad. Hedonist Jess was never afraid so he can't be either one of them. It's like seeing himself from above, in a news copter because of the buzzing in his ears.

He looks over at his fiancée, her one elbow in the cardboard case trying to retrieve the last of his hair care supplies. Who does she see? Who does she think she's marrying? It would be a stupid question to ask because everyone is a caricature of themselves to someone else – good looks and characteristics slotted neatly into sections even if you're not like that anymore – so she would just look at him funny in that way she has and say _you're jesse_ , _jesse._ And of course he is. Just at the moment he's thinking this, she loses balance on the balls of her feet and the palm of her hand hits the bottom of box with a plastic snap. Mr Goodpart lies in her hand tailless. She catches his eye quickly, face white and eyes big, and that that's it, just there who she thinks he is: neurotic, vain, temperamental.

She moves onto another box, _stab stab stab_ into the duct tape (the knife will need to be safely put away when he tells her) smiling as if she's opening a present. Her cheerfulness has remained the same since they started packing up her car and Joey's at seven this morning – shouldn't she feel at least a bit put out that he isn't moving in with her? It didn't waver through the strange looking neighbourhood, as they were talking to the man whose apartment this was (no, not his exactly, were his words, a very special friend's, and Jesse and Joey knew what that meant) Becky looked right into his sad eyes but didn't see the gratitude on his face. She hasn't even noticed that the proud new homeowner hasn't moved from the cushions since dinner. Then she squeals.

Jesse slips his legs over the side of the couch so he can look over her shoulder at the top layer of picture frames. It's his yearbook photos grades first through tenth because after that he was different; hair still perfect sure, he never stopped being so goddamn attractive (though his sister often said he did), but he couldn't bear to look back into his own eyes and find the emptiness that was consuming him, at the smiling mouth and knowing where it had been just hours before the flash because even then he was ashamed of himself, Jesse sees that now.

They are picked up to reveal happy photos, ones that Jesse can stare at for hours and hours: him and Pam as kids, older at a family barbecue, or ones that Danny took when they were arguing about something stupid on the sofa and didn't know about it. One of them is in a thick, expensive silver frame that Jesse hasn't ever seen before, but knows when and where it was taken even before his glasses kick into focus; Pam is propped up in bed, mouth blurred as if she was in the middle of saying something to the second-time-around dad behind the camera, Jesse is cradling Baby Stephanie in his arms, looking down at her, ill even on film, and Joey is stood shoulder against, staring at him like he just span the moon. It must have Joey's, this small moment in time where there was enough love in one room to nourish nations, and he must have put it in the box.

"Wow, she was beautiful, Jess," Becky says, her fingers obscuring Pam's eyes for a second, pressing down as if she's trying to make her blink back at her through the thin sheet of plastic and past.

Tears push up into Jesse's eyes and burn his nose in an unfair bite of sadness, "yeah," he swallows, "yeah she was."

She disappears with the photo into the bedroom, probably to place it on the bedside table since that's the kind of person Jesse believes Becky to be; who thinks it's nice to wake and see family smiling at you because hers remains big and boisterous, not broken off into spiteful sections like his, because she hasn't had someone close to her die yet. At least he didn't have to watch Pam bleed out on his bed sheets. He could go right now, shout _sorry rebecca gotta run!_ and she would be saved all this pain.

He pulls the purple shirt, which had been wrapped up amongst photographic memories, onto his lap. It smells all Katsopolised but Jesse still lets out a laugh somehow because when he asked Joey if (earlier down in the lobby) he could come up with him, the older man had squinted and chuckled and said that that was about the worst idea anyone's ever had, but now a little piece of him is here – ha. The fact it makes Jesse feel so much safer makes him feel sick to his stomach.

"Beck, can I talk to you a sec?"

It seems to take forever to get her next to him because half way across the room, a song they hate comes on the radio and she takes a detour into the kitchenette to change the channel, something classical, lots of violins. The sort of music cheesy sitcoms enlists whenever something touching happens. They are sat next to each other but it's more opposite because of the way their bodies are angled, away from the chaos of an open space, she has her legs crossed, "I'm sorry about your comb, Jess, but I promise I'll go straight down to the drug store tomorrow –"

Jesse looks down, balls his fingers into fists in the fabric, as if he's about to tear it and he thinks about it. He's never actually said anything about this to anyone, let alone 'come out', that homosexual cliché; with Pam one day it wasn't there and the next it just was and Joey, it was obvious. He wonders, despite himself because he should be thinking about Becky – the person smiling at him, who loves him right now – how many people Joey has come out to, there's a whole different side of him that Jesse doesn't know anything about. What is he like with these other friends; maybe he doesn't do his Bullwinkle impression at all. How many hockey games and out of state gigs have actually been hospital visits and funeral? Jesse imagines him suddenly, sat on Danny's couch in the dark crying after coming home, and he wishes he'd known.

"What is it? Sweetheart, you're scaring me," Becky goes to touch his face but he flinches away, if she does he'll crumble and say everything is fine. Just the way – concerned, hurt – she's looking at him makes it hard not cry.

He reaches behind him for his jacket on the makeshift cardboard table, fingers shaking as they sink into the pocket and find the folded death notice. He hands it to her gently even though he wants to crush it into her palm. There is a scrapping of creases being uncreased. The letter, ominous for its length, is looked over. Jesse closes his eyes and focuses on breathing because her eyes will be scanning over the final paragraphs now, one word will catch her attention with a cold shiver down her spine and she will have to go back and, intently, begin letting the black ink of each word infiltrate her innocent irises and dilate her pupils.

 _In December of last year, Mr Katsopolis again saw Dr A., as he was concerned about his singing voice. Swollen lymph nodes were diagnosed and Mr Katsopolis asked to be referred to me. Unfortunately at this time Jesse's T-cells have fallen below 100/mm3, meaning we are able give a more accurate diagnosis of AIDS._

He braces himself against the arm of the couch, counting backwards towards the screaming that is just about to come. But it holds off, she laughs instead, caught between a laugh and a sigh of relief, "ah – I see what they've done," she says, so calmly that there's almost a hint of hysteria in her tone, "they've mixed up your notes – it happens more often than you'd think, I –"

Her fiancé still doesn't look up, the brightness of the lilac becomes watery, and it's as though time itself has stopped as she's staring at him, trying to catch his eyes.

"Jesse," her voice cracks around the edges, the way it does on TV if she has to talk about some fatal accident that happened on the freeway, upbeat but not devoid somehow of desperation, "they've made a _mistake_ ," almost a question, another thing he doesn't answer so she gets to her feet in an effort to make him look at her, "who did this test?"

It works. Slowly his chin tilts up, his gaze meeting hers and she can see the tears on his cheeks.

A plea to him, to cruel higher beings for this all to just be some god-awful dream, "tell me they've got it wrong."

He gets up, the shirt falls forgotten between their feet, he is shaking, "Beck, listen –"

She steps back, her hands covering her face, "no, no, no…"

"Beck –"

"No, no, no, no, no."

Jesse reaches out, the air is thick and it doesn't feel like he'll ever be able to get to her, like he's falling into the sea and she's golden above the waves, features distorted. "Becky."

Her hands fall away, revealing a white face he doesn't even recognise, she screams, "don't touch me," and backs away. The box they were unpacking fifteen minutes ago hits her in the back of her calf, makes her topple back and he grabs her shoulders to stop her hitting her head on the TV set.

They both let out a breath and for a moment it could be like nothing happened, she goes limp in his arms and he holds her just like that, searching for things in each other's teary expressions that are illuminated by the cheap orange light – explanations, absolution.

She whispers, "how could you? Who are you?" with disgust; he disgusts her, Becky.

He wants to explain that he's not a seedy creep who hangs around in bushes and alleyways, that she doesn't need to look at him like that; it's not like they make out on the news, leather-clad guys gyrating against each other, all strobe lighting and Barbra Streisand. He was the one who made mistakes, he was getting back at Joey, he was just a kid, but he knows that would make it worse.

"It was a long time ago, I swear," he brushes the hair away from her face, aware of the line between them suddenly, running his thumb under her eye to get rid of the hot tears he put there as she closes them, "I'm your fiancé, I love you."

This proves to be too much, the six words which were certainties and now mean nothing. Becky pulls herself out of his grasp and there is a spilt second when they both realise how weak it is, "no," she is staring at the thinness of his body as if seeing it for the first time, surveying a stranger in the street – how flimsy this whole engagement has been – "no, _my_ Jesse would never do this. _My_ Jesse –" she turns away, her back to him, the blinking corpse of _her_ Jesse and every one before, "oh, God."

He steps on the heels of her shadow as she moves into the kitchen, presses her forehead against the wall with the clock above her head, deep, shallow breathing to each ticking. After a moment she turns so the countertop cuts into her abdomen, hair shielding her face from his poisonous gaze, wrings her hands slowly like she wants him to beg, which he does, "Becky, please. Becky, sweetheart, please don't take it off."

The ring clinks against the imitation marble, next to the microwave oven. They both stand – now completely separated, all ties severed – silent because there are no words, everything has been expressed in that single action; they are over, nothing can ever be the same, they've lost each other. Dead. Buried.

Jesse traces the lining of the sky; he cannot bear to watch her walk away, down the hall with her coat on her arm. It was such a sinister solar noon when they left the hospital.

She slams the door.

 _From here: Jesse and I have discussed the course of drug therapy he would like to take. We will meet monthly with Dr A. to review. On my recommendation, Jesse has arranged to see a dietician and hopes to start replenishing his body but is aware that a side effect of weight loss on NRTIs is common. Nurse G. will start visiting him at home in early February as everyone involved is keen to keep Jesse's care community based._

* * *

It's colder in Danny's kitchen than Jesse remembers it being. For all its drawing stuck onto the cabinets and vague lemon and lime smell, it's still not immune to the last dregs of winter wind. Joey's left the back door open; he went out to his car to fetch something and Jesse doesn't like the feeling of being stood here all alone like he's doing something illicit in an alien place that, two weeks ago, he called home. His name has been scribbled out in angry red ink on the family day planner because (of course) everything is planned a month in advance in the Tanner household. He hasn't seen his brother-in-law since the night before he'd moved out and Danny had acted like a bratty little kid whose parents just got divorced. Jesse is probably the last person he wants in his house but since he's working so hard on the show, there's no harm in _Double J Jingles_ getting a change of scene.

Jesse looks in the refrigerator. There's no fried chicken on the top shelf, its trademark logo of a cannibalised cock feasting on the legs of its only friends – kind of sick when you think about it. Pints of _Sunny Delight_ stacked up in its place, from Stephanie and/or Kimmy Gobbler's birthday party; if Joey makes him drink another glass of the saccharine stuff, he will literally turn into the world's most tan tangerine. He smiles as his eyes catch the moment just before the light goes out; him and Pam used to play that game when they were kids, and he always used to complain that he couldn't put his head inside the pink _Jetsons_ style fridge to see, until their mom came in and clipped their ears. You lose magic as you grow up somehow, even though that's when you need it the most. On the door are multi-coloured plastic letters, Danny's spelt out CLEAN and underneath it TIDY in blue and purple respectively. Jesse stares them until they start to swim about like _Alphabetti Spaghetti_ and unconsciously his fingers rearrange the red ones into A – I – D – S. Then the back gate bangs, and just as quickly he puts them back and wipes where they had been with the palm of his hand like a blackboard, as if the façade has a memory. Just in case.

Joey runs in with his pager bleeping, carrying the office notes he'd left on the back seat under his arm. He puts them on the table and stubborn sheets pool and escape their paperclips. He waves one hand as the other starts to punch digits into the photo in casual dismal and Jesse heads into the living room, smiling at the way he can sense Joey sticking his tongue out at him as he does so, before the other end of the line picks up and he says _yes, hello, Joseph Gladstone, I believe Mr Rinsler just tried to reach me…_

He hates this room: the gingham loveseat, the chairs, the pokey alcove where Joey used to sleep – all the family photos including him have been taken down, Jesse's surprised Danny hasn't been so petty as to get new ones done but he probably just hasn't gotten round to it yet. When he moved in, Pam's ghost had still lingered on bookshelves and in doorways but over time, as moments began to outweigh memories, she'd faded and now he only sees that night Joey told him he loved him (had done all along) and the time Michelle called them _dada_ , much to their secret delight and her real dada's dismay. Maybe Danny thinks he has a right to be angry but it's been almost four years and Jesse hasn't exactly left him in the lurch; he still has Joey, who is healthy and kind and humorous. Maybe he should go down to the station one day, where there are witness, and straighten things out with him.

"House of Comics want to see me Tuesday rather than Thursday, but I said –"

Joey comes in and Jesse flops down the couch, pretending to be deep in thought by chewing on a pen but his teeth catch on the nip as he goes to speak and there's a gush of ink into his mouth. He tries to mask a gag with a cough and nonchalantly saunters over to the mirror, confirming that he does indeed have the tongue of a smurf. He's impressed that he can pull it off in a strange sort of way, "cool, Tuesday? Which route are you thinking of taking, 'cause –"

"You sure?"

They stare into the reflection – Joey over his shoulder, Jesse's mouth still ajar; it's probably a mirror trick but their faces suddenly appear so much older, with stress and worry. But just like that, a flick of a dime, they change back again but not as young as they always imagine they are. Joey's eyes, the younger man notices as he watches them watch him as though he's supposed to know something, are different but he can't quite but his finger on why, "yes, of course –" Jesse starts to say and then he realises they've been dimmed by crying and remembers; it's his first check-up in Ward 86 on Tuesday, where they look and see how deep the cancer is or isn't, how long he has or hasn't got left without medication. He'd forgotten briefly and what a blissful couple of hours that had been.

"Joseph," he pushes away from the fireplace, "how many times do I have to tell you, I'm going on my own," and perches on the arm of the chair facing the kitchen in three practised strides (why does he have to have this possessiveness over him all of a sudden? why does a small part of him find it endearing?), "you come with me, everyone will think we're – going together," the words come out of his blue mouth like that would be the worst thing in the world but not for the reasons Joey thinks; he's not ashamed for people to think he's his boyfriend, the exact opposite in fact. It is a place you want to be seen with someone to say, _see? i'm not like you, i'm not a slut._ It's because in hospital he is Hermes; kindergarten shyness and spelling explanations, he has to convince the staff to let him go back to Jesse, but he's still just a small boy in a frail body with a stupid name they can't help but slip into. He doesn't want Joey to see him like that.

Silence.

"You could try giving Becky a call."

He has tried calling her lots of times. There have been days when he's done nothing but. There's a stack of unsealed and unstamped letters on his bedside table that he's spent nights writing her. He stopped pleading to an answerphone machine when one morning he turned on Channel 8 and saw TV Danny – smiling, exasperated – tell the caring viewers of _Wake Up, San Francisco!_ that Rebecca has taken a some time off to go visit family in good old Nebraska, so she is in Valentine without her valentine. He daren't call her mother's house in case one of those four burly brothers of hers picks up the phone, and he doesn't know what she's said to them about him. She's probably not even there, already jumped into bed with Doyce Plunk.

Joey doesn't know what to expect in that long moment; Jesse has always been at the mercy of erratic behaviour but Joey hopes more than anything that he will grab his jacket and demand to be taken home because that's easier to deal with than tears that have crept in with distressing frequency the last couple of years. Somehow, if he doesn't cry, Joey can kid himself that he's still got the old Jesse – the Jesse he drank coffee with in his college dorm and talked about life in existential terms, the Jesse whose body was hot and ready under his touch, whose moans he can still hear against his ear sometimes at night.

"Becky left me, remember? She doesn't love me anymore," he says it like some actor in a B-movie that they could only film under failing light because the words just didn't meet his eyes, the anger isn't there even though the rage is caged up in his chest and it _hurts_ , "I don't want you, okay? Anyone," and he sinks into the chair, hoping its springy cushion will swallow him.

Pipes creak far off in the house. Joey wants to put his hands up and say _okay, okay_ so they can go back to pretending everything's the same, so he can go into the kitchen and hide it out but he doesn't. Jesse defences are down and if he were to leave now, he might run off back to Tennessee or worse. The possibility of worse becoming reality is what makes Joey call Jesse every day to make sure there's not a noose tied around his neck. It makes him perch on the arm of Jesse's chair but does not touch him – that would be too much.

"Let's face it, there's no one to help me, just leave me alone," Joey knows he doesn't mean it so he doesn't move, just watches him rake his hands down his face (it makes his skin cave into his cheekbones, shows how thin he is), "I want Pam, alright? I want my sister and she's not here, is she?"

It always just takes one look with Joey for something to happen, as if one night he'd snuck into his room and turned Jesse inside out; kissing every section of his skeleton, all the parts that are riddled with disease, his burning lungs, his beating heart. It takes one watery look to get them side-by-side, compressed by the wooden frame; thighs squeezed together, stonewashed blue and black. Jesse slides his legs over his lap so he's in Joey's arms completely, and he can press his tears into the curve of his shoulder while Joey whispers _jesse shh honey shh_ until the wave passes and they can feel like the only people in the world. They have time; the school bus won't pull up in its yellow haze for another three hours and Danny hasn't been home in daylight since Becky's been away.

"She dead and I don't know what to do," Jesse links his arms around Joey's neck and holds tight, so the weight of his words and the desperation hidden underneath them cannot be misunderstood, even for a second, because they don't have that much time, "I can't do this on my own, Joe, I can't."

He flushes and his grip falls away, embarrassed, betrayed by his own emotions. A car door slams down the street. Joey looks ready to kiss him because he leans in and Jesse bites his lip, but at the last moment he seems to change his mind with a slight shake of his head. He probably afraid of him now, probably hates him deep down, Jesse thinks, Joey could be dying too and it would be all his fault – "Joey, what the hell are you doing?"

Joey's hands have snaked under his shirt and he doesn't even flinch when his fingers brush past Jesse's protruding ribs. There's not a hint of fear on his face, no sign anywhere, only a smirk as he reaches Jesse's underarms and shrugs, "it always works on Michelle, so I thought it was worth a shot."

"What –" and suddenly, unexpectedly, Jesse is being tickled until all the angst has been knocked out of him, "Joseph, I'm serious, cut it out –" and he's got his hands threaded through Joey's hair, laughing harder than he has since he was a kid and begging half-heartedly for mercy. When Joey stops, smiling sheepishly, Jesse pulls him down so their noses are touching, so no part of their bodies is separated because he cannot bear to know where he ends and Joey begins.

They will both remember this moment in slow motion, frame by frame: Jesse's mouth parting to be kissed, his eyes glistening. The sound of someone's throat being cleared. Joey twisting his head round to look as Jesse's hands and his smile fall away.

The next thing Jesse knows, he's sat upright and alone and Joey is stood beside him, at a safe distance, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck, "Dan," he says with the forced delight of a housewife who's been caught in bed by her husband with his best friend, "you're home – we were just getting some work done."

Danny is stood in the doorway with no expression on his face, "looks like it," and then he looks at Jesse clumsily crossing his legs to hide the things his business partner stirs up inside him, "Jesse."

"Daniel," it comes out as an instant omission of guilt and Jesse looks to the door as he stands up, to run far away from Girard Street, but like any good journalist, his brother-in-law does not give him time to escape.

"So, _Jess_ , how's the new apartment?"

"Yeah, just leave it, Danny, alright? I ain't feeling too great –"

Danny's hand is already on his arm, loose like he might get burned but enough to keep Jesse there to watch his face twitch at the words, "been feeling ill a lot lately, huh?"

"Look, Danny," Joey starts in the background, "we're real busy here, so –"

Danny ignores him because it's obvious by the look plastered over his stupid face that he's enjoying every minute of this, of Jese squirming under his grasp, "in fact, the other week," pauses for dramatic effect, "didn't you get a call from the General?" and the younger man stares back at him (no traces of blood left in the Katsopolis corpse, can open, worms everywhere), "DJ told me."

"She told you?"

"Oh, Jesse," Danny says smugly, dropping his arm, "my girls tell me everything," and letting him get up to the step with his hand on the doorknob before speaking again; this time with real, easy spite in his tone, "so, the rumours are true – you really were some second rate rent boy."

"Come on now, you guys," Joey is pleading with them, begging that by a miracle it will suddenly be teacher curriculum day and DJ and Stephanie will come home,

Jesse doesn't turn around, breathes in and lets his voice drop to a whisper, " _excuse_ me?"

"I mean, Pamela always had her suspicions but –"

The door shaking cuts him off and Jesse grabbing a fistful of his neatly ironed tie, "you leave my sister out of this," normally he would be able to pick the other man right up off the grown but Danny takes advantage of this bungling weakness and backs away.

"Hey, hey," he coos, shaking his hands about incredulously, " _I_ always thought better of you than that. _I,_ for one, couldn't believe my brother could possibly be some pathetic pillow biter."

"What did you just call me?"

Joey tries to get between them, "I really think this is getting out of hand," act as a physical blockade but Jesse has already bridge the gap, crossed the line.

"What the fuck did you just call me, Danny?"

Danny goes to open his mouth but he has already been sent stumbling across the room, a hand over his nose, and Joey has his hands on Jesse's shoulders to hold him back as they both watch the blood trickle down Danny's chin and drip onto his white shirt. The injured man looks from them to the crimson stain and back again, "get out," he says, "get out before I call the police. And stay away from my girls."

Jesse shakes Joey off and his attempts to defend him, head spinning, eyes burning as he rushes out, "fine, okay, don't worry about it," and the sunshine hits him. He walks down the street – a dog barks, taxi rushes past, an old lady opposite puts out her laundry – until he can't feel his feet, until his surrounds are unfamiliar and he can sit on the sidewalk with his head against the fire hydrant and gasp for air. Joey doesn't come after him. He has to do this alone.

This is the last time Jesse sees Danny Tanner.

* * *

Joey goes to the meeting and Jesse sits in the waiting room alone.

Everything is eerily white, all the walls, the floors, his hospital gown; don't they realise that nothing attracts the devil like light? Something to devour, forbidden land to claim, a canvas craves paint. Filled with angry thoughts. Jesse watches the sick parade in front of him with contempt, he is not like them: ribcages poking through too many clothes. Some of them stare back at him, and he doesn't know whether it's because he still has the vague muscular form of a healthy boy or they recognise him from a back alley ten years ago.

On the table separating the rows of chairs, there's a pile of gardening magazines and one solitary back copy _of Dynamite_. Paula Abdul is on the cover and inside - Jesse thumbs through because he has nothing better to do - she talks about her new single and some hunk of a sitcom star she's dating. The Bart Simpson poster that was promised at the back has been ripped out, but it would be better than the ones they've got tacked up here. A naked man with just a sheet covering his boner, looking like he's just had the best orgasm of his life. Tagline: YOU'LL NEVER FORGET THE FEELING OF SAFE SEX. It's seems pretty fucking dumb to Jesse that they'd go to all the trouble of making sure there's absolutely no trace of the perfect males forms contained within the pages of _Men's Health_ but then put them, the embodiment of sexual desire, on the very things that are supposed to deter you from going at it. There should be something horrible and graphic instead, he'll have to ask the doctor about it.

Someone sits down in the chair beside him, their sent of musk and cigarettes burns his nose. Jesse tries not to look but he finds himself mesmerised by the way the man's long fingers tap against the plastic armrest. He doesn't mean to see it, the purple black spot, the size of a quarter on the stranger's wrist, but the horror on his face must be apparent because then the man speaks _: that was the first one, they're multiplying like rabbits - kind of ironic, don't you think? they keep getting bigger and they won't go away._ Jesse smiles at him without moving his head and closes his eyes. This is no happening.

"Uncle Jesse?"

He's in garden – an already long forgotten body vertical and guitar on his stomach. It's one of those evenings football was made for. The words he choked out to DJ and Stephanie upstairs are still on his lips, tasting like a hangover. He's not marrying Becky, yes he's still moving out, and no he's not going to disappear again. The youngest, sweetest of the two seemed to be loaded with questions that Jesse answered or carefully dodged whilst DJ just looked on. Past him, through him like everyone is going to from now on. Michelle's biggest qualm was that no wedding means no cake so Danny's taking the three of them for ice cream instead, Joey in tow.

Donna Jo didn't go, she stands on the terrace, water around her feet and her uncle has bite his instincts on his tongue to stop himself from telling her to be careful because what a hypocrite that would make him. He never wanted to become his father and now he never will, perhaps that's only Lady Luck.

"Can I talk to you?" she holds a bucket of fried chicken out as an olive branch, doesn't flinch when he doesn't touch it even when the hardest questions come. She has a pink scrunchie in her hair and sad eyes, "you're sick, aren't you? That's why you're moving out. "

He says he's fine, which makes her come closer and sit down, holding his hand, "then why do the hospital keep calling?"

Jesse looks at his niece, the ghost of her mother seeping out of every pore. He's never thought about it before, how she's seen so much, so many of the pivotal moments of his longest pseudo relationship; how easily she could have blurted it out in anger to her disgusted dad or innocent sisters, good kid really, "Deej, I can't - I really don't want - right now – please don't tell anyone about this, okay?"

She throws her arms around him, perfectly edible pieces of meat scattered on the grass, Jesse doesn't have the energy to be mad for once about that; it all goes into not bawling his eyes out on her shoulder. She says he can talk to her about anything, she practically a grown-up anyway, Why couldn't this be Pam? Talking like this, doing this? He loves his niece but there's just too much he cannot say. "I really love you, Uncle Jesse, it's going to be okay, I promise."

He thinks now, as a nurse calls his name, about the rocket ride he wanted when he was his niece's age. An orange tin can to take him away from the suburbs because maybe people didn't care on Mars if you liked watching the cheerleaders after school and the jocks wash down in the shower rooms. Maybe there weren't people at all. It was always just one good thing he told himself to make all the pain of being different go away.

"Mr Katsopolis?"

So alone and the nurse stares at him with an unnatural brightness that has to be worked on year after year of doing this walk down death row, she would be pretty too; brown hair and almond eyes which were designed for smiling, dimmed by notches on hospital bedposts of patients passing on. He is not supposed to be alone, he just couldn't let Joey miss another meeting because of him and there was no point calling the woman he used to be sure would love him until the end of his life. Round here, people stick together in their plastic chairs; stand up straight, holding hands. Jesse thinks fleetingly about asking the man next to him if he could come with him because he's alone too, but he's got his Walkman in and the idea fades as quickly as the song changes.

Jesse smiles politely, "don't worry about it," and gets up. This debauched city's got to be good for something; friends on every street corner in shop doorways to give him something to make jumping off the golden bridge feel like floating into Heaven, everyone is so much kinder when they have nothing to give and all he has to lose is that rocket ride

Some familiar figure passes him in the corridor, and then his name is shouted. A hand moulded with his, leads him back to the reception – she whispers in his ear that she'll never leave him again and she never does. Her voice is soft and lilting, cuts through the apathetic atmosphere; the man looks almost disappointed but the nurse smiles, ushering them away – "Miss Donaldson, of course, if the two of you would like to come through…"

Honeyed skin and six pounds lighter, summer blue sweater and jeans she's had since high school. Two coffee cups of Settle's best and San Francisco's worst in hand, she's here, though the corners of her mouth droop in vacant stare. Seeing his actions embodied in the woman he loves so much, is like seeing his own ghost in a dozen small deaths. He is sitting down beside her, drowning in his winter coat. Maybe there's something in the air, sky's heavy but it does not rain, feeling the weight, as he is, of this conversation.

Becky looks at him so intensely that Jesse braces him against her hot palm against his cold cheek. Instead she whispers, "I can't believe you didn't tell me," full of hurt because of course it was Joseph 'Traitor' Gladstone who told her about the appointment.

"Did you have to bend his thumb back?"

She blows the steam off his coffee with a smile before finally passing it to him, "did you know, he broke it when he was a kid?"

Jesse sips the brown swill, matching his lips with the orange crescent of lipstick she left as she tested it, "Danny do it?"

They're laughing but Rebecca still gazes at the dogs on their leads and babies in their prams, and he feels like he can see right inside her soul, "you were living – raising children with your first love for _three years_ and you didn't tell me. What else don't I know about you, Jess?"

It's out, all of it, Joey told her everything, from the dorm room '77 to present. There is no lying to himself or anyone else anymore, so they talk about things Jesse never wanted to talk about; every kiss, every club squeezed into half an hour because it will never be mentioned again.

Becky nods while he pauses in all the right places but is careful, they both notice, not study him because Joey must have kissed him here, touched him there, and she cannot distinguish the longing in her throat from the betrayal piercing the lining of her gut, "Jesse Katsopolis, I don't know how you can think," she says against his knuckles as she holds them, lips dry and trembling, "there would be anything you could do that would make me stop loving you."

* * *

The first night in his new apartment, Jesse doesn't sleep; not because he's afraid that he won't wake up – small mercies after all – but waking up in a fragile, foreign body he doesn't know with the purple-black trademarks of disease (they grow on your insides too, but at least he can easily plaster over them and all the cracks in his laughter lines). He paces with Becky's ring in his hand, on the carpet, in the trashcan. The shadows become long and ligneous against the previous tenant's blinds. Jesse wonders if he died, that's why the place was so cheap in the heart of his old stomping ground. He looks around for medicine in the kitchen cupboards, anything, blood on the bathroom sink. This place is filled with ghosts, he wants to pull up the floorboards, tear down the wallpaper with its nicotine tinge. He wants out, and when he comes down (this grief, this unbearable grief for his old self, Becky, the plans they had), the phone is unhinged next to him and the doorbell is ringing. It is not her standing there, it was not her he called at 2am.

Joey treads carefully, for the people downstairs and Jesse's state of mind. Band-Aids and alcohol; his gas tank is full, prepared to take his ex-roommate to hospital if he'd tried to kill himself, after such a frantic exchange. He cleans up Jesse's small wounds, from catching himself on a door, from moving boxes. He puts on an old video of King Creole to try and soothe the gaping one in his soul. The heating is turned on, Becky's ring taken out of the rubbish and put away, neatly and out of sight. He makes Jesse drink a big glass of water and they sit together on the couch, until his head starts to loll against Joey's shoulder and he carries him into his room with the movie still on in the background. Jesse watches the older man take off his shoes and sticks up his arms like a child for his sweater to be removed.

"When's Beck getting back?" he whispers when he's down to his briefs, being tucked into bed.

Joey smiles softly, a little sadly, as he reaches down to brush the hair out Jesse's eyes before turning out the light, "not tonight, pal, maybe tomorrow."

In the morning, Jesse wakes up. His body is the same. There is a familiar bundle wrapped up in a blanket on his couch, he goes back to bed, locks the door and cries. It wasn't a dream then.

When he resurfaces hours later, the place has been tidied to the nines and there's fried eggs and coffee on the table. Joey asks if he wants to talk about it and he says he says he doesn't. Joey assures him that he'll be there, not knowing the true weight of his words because long after the immediate waves of fear pass, he will witness a friend, a business partner, love of his life wither away before him. It will be different from all the others before, he does not understand that yet because he will make him take his fourteen pills a day (some with food. some without. some in the morning or at night), watch his CD4 count like a hawk as the drugs slowly, precariously increase it above 50, while ignoring his own.

And so January turns to June on labels of prescription bottles and outside hospital doors. The weather gets warmer as Jesse gets colder. The sun comes through the blinds in straight California lines and gives him a snowy-white tan. They make jokes and dinner, him and Joey, as they stand elbow to elbow at the stove, touching each other by mistake or on purpose. It's simple pleasures such as these that make Jesse open his eyes again and again.

Every day starts the same: Joey arrives at nine and shakes Jesse awake ( _yes, it's that time already, yes, you have to get up today_ ). He counts out the latest cocktail of medication and gives it to Jesse with a tall glass of special vitaminised orange squash. Breakfast will go well or badly. If it's Friday or Monday (alternating), Maria will come – community nurse and small saviour – to sit with Jesse and take his pulse and drink the expensive coffee he insists on buying for her visits. He will either flirt with her or get angry at her pandering, but she will react the same either way: laughing, patting his arm, complimenting his hair. Joey sits in the spare room half-listening but knowing he shouldn't, utilising the time to sort out the books, call up potential clients or existing ones, falling asleep on hot afternoons, on the make-shift bed he or Becky sleeps on sometimes because going back and froth three times a day on top of everything else gets exhausting. Maria will knock on the door softly and he will walk her down to her car, talking about Jesse's condition. Often there will be some suggested appointment to arrange. Occasionally it is urgent and/or serious. Rarely does Joey cry in the middle of the street.

He's feeling more and more like a nomad nowadays because Girard Street isn't really home anymore; Danny is still very angry, so much as that at this rate he'll probably die before Jesse. So he's been making point of not needing anyone, his girls are growing up and the Tanner family quartet is getting along just fine. He is not happy that his oldest friend is taking the side of his brother-in-law instead of him, not matter how many times Joey has told him it's not like that. Even Becky has spoken in his defence.

If it's Wednesday, Becky will come and take Jesse to the General, big smile and ring right hand, fourth finger. They will be away all day and Joey will go back to the big house for a couple of hours to clean and prepare dinner; he will talk to children he now feels distanced from and still make them after school snacks. He will help with homework and they won't ask about Uncle Jesse because he has broken his promise, Danny will have them believe, and disappeared again. It is not Joey's place to talk about it even though Michelle's heart is the thing that's broken. By the time he gets back to the apartment, it will have the tiny vibrations of life. Becky will be there or not – she will call him at eleven on the dot like every night. Jesse will, no matter what happens, be depressed when he finds him the living room; because he and his ex-fiancée had a fight, because everything is hopeless, just because.

Every other box in the calendar line – although they seem few and far between – are what Jesse calls 'married days', when they sit hunched over a pot of coffee and talk over the way their latest jingle is going to go; Jesse's miniature keyboard propped up against two or three of Becky's books, paper work spread out on the carpet, news of Europe omnipresent in the background. Or they'll ride the tram to the last stop like tourists and talk about the matchstick people on the other side of the matchbox window. Or just curl up the two of them on the couch, watch cartoons and horror films, fingers, knees, knobby wrists mingling under the blanket – their lips too, more than once. Chaste touchings of skin and bristle, that go from one cheekbone to another then forehead and nose like a rosary prayer, a silent _I am here, I'm here right beside you._ Depending on the scene unfurling in front of them, hungry, desperate kisses, rations of flesh; every sensation candied and savoured because Jesse is insistent on keeping things strictly at a junior high level, second base on the soccer field at recess. It makes things – hard is the wrong word in this instance – difficult and easy at the same time, these days. Loving and being loved is a vice like everything else.

One night (those lazy sunsets typical of late June) Jesse is sprawled on the floor with his back against a footstool, a pencil behind his ear, glasses on the tip of his nose, his eyes flicking between the paper in front of him and the some game show on TV and its hosts who is a very shoddy imitation of Bob Barker. Joey is in the hall, talking to his mother on the telephone (she calls this number exclusively now seeing as her son is almost always here and it saves awkward conversation with the awkward childhood friend). If Jesse happens to answer on the off chance, Mindy will say _what a charming telephone voice you have, jesse,_ he will say _thank you, mrs gladstone_ every time and then she will fluster in the seconds before one or both of then are save by Joey taking the receiver, _mindy, honestly._ Her tone is too kind – Jesse knows that Joey talks to her about him, the sick roommate because her words linger on the line as though it's the last time she will ever speak to the guy she's only met a handful of times.

"Joseph, this is insane," Jesse exclaims once the phone is hung up and they are safely in their own bubble again.

His pencil is dislodged as Joey snakes his arms round Jesse's shoulders to glance at the lyrics over them, it bounces and rolls into the kitchen. Mouthing the rhythm hot against Jesse's cheek, he counts syllables with his fingers on the page until it falls away with a sigh of exasperation and his hands are pulled down into Jesse's clammy grasp. His eyes tilt up to meet Joey's and the Technicolor televisual glow is forgotten. They are smiling, "not _tha_ t, huh?" and Jesse has to bite down hard on his lip in order to concentrate. Immediately regrets this since it means he can't kiss him at all in the next ten minutes and a flicker of pain crosses their too-close faces so Jesse turns his down, "you going back and froth, I mean, traffic is a nightmare, gas prices are going up _all the time_ , and you know, most of your stuff is here anyway so –"

Joey carefully unhinges his fingers to pull Jesse's chin upwards to him again, "Jesse Katsopolis," he smirks, tracing the line of his jaw just for the added pleasure of seeing him blush, "are you asking me to move in with you?"

It's barely more than whisper but Joey hears it through a megaphone of happiness, when Jesse says, stretched out and unsure, "maybe – if you wanted to."

"Yeah, that would be awesome," he presses his lips to the wick of his mouth, ignoring the look of hesitation, and then they go back to sorting out slogans and staring at Saturday night giveaways.

* * *

 **A/N:** I don't know, I've just always wanted to see Danny Tanner get punched in the face. I'm sorry to say that things only get sadder from here. Thank you all so much for reading, grab you passport ready for next time!


	4. 2000 (Part One)

**A/N:** This part is a bit unorthodox because I broke it into two parts - I know, crazy. Speaking of crazy, I feel like Jesse is OOC here but that's probably because _Full House_ never did a very special episode about AIDS.

* * *

 _"...you're just a neat freak_

 _with three kids and a degree_

 _local TV puppet with no empathy_

 _your little ghost spins like the circus in her grave_

 _but you just watch yourself in every screen_

 _she won't let you, see, forget about me_

 _it's harder than you think_

 _try remember if you can, Mr Personality Man."_

 **Track 13 /** Mr Personality Man (Dedicated To...)

* * *

Flowers, funnies and Fitzgerald: propped up like dollies, in a row under pink linen. Four other eyes framed either side by two heavy lenses. Joey tells uninterested air about the biology of blooming bulbs. Jesse says they'll take a tulip tour of the Netherlands. Rebecca frowns at that or a fancy prose on page. They know it means nothing; in Athens, the greatest importance is the rising and setting of the sun, and Jesse seeing it. They lie in his bed, the first white day of summer, grapefruit juice and new interveinal drugs. Bliss. Sometimes they laugh, actually happy in their – because it is theirs – little villa overlooking the sea. Flowers flourishing, books being written, songs sung under one strange roof. Truly happy; forgetting why they're here, California smiles and home-baked cookies that taste like _Vanilla Weasels_.

Sometimes.

Today is not one of those days. Today, the atmosphere hangs thick and droplets of heat seep in. Jesse's throat burns from last night's lines; he's uncomfortable and doesn't want to hear that he was warned. He's tired, let's give the whole fucking thing up, and Joey is tired of him saying that, the threat. Becky is better somehow – _sweetheart, some juice will do you good._ A red stain. Joey gets up to strip the bed sheets, throw a different blanket over his lover. In doctors' terms, it is only a matter of time, in San Francisco he's just not doing so great right now. They're talking arbitrarily about Thanksgiving, but Becky and Joey both know that they'll be back and will have made it home again by then.

"Did you get her to move here so you could gang up on me?"

A sigh. "You know it's not like that, Jess."

He goes outside to smoke, a new vice, like Jesse used to – although he doesn't approve of it. It's something that applause or Popeye can't explain, holding death in his mouth like that, Joey. He hasn't been feeling too well himself lately, sleeping on the sofa, to help his back apparently. But in truth it's not that, he rising early out of worrying and doesn't want to wake anyone, but Becky knows.

Neither of them has mentioned it to Jesse; there would be no point, just cause upset no-one needs, unfair when he has to fight so hard just to keep himself alive. So Joey sits there, out in the sun, and Jesse watches him through the patio doors.

"You need to stop this," Becky says very calmly, "the girls are coming in a few hours – Stephanie's passed over going to Mexico."

"Yeah?"

She kisses him, forehead still cold in eighty-six degree heat, "you've got to give them your best Uncle Jesse smile."

And then he asks for juice

* * *

The place is like a purgatory for half beating hearts, so fast hours and clouds never meet in the orbit of time. Dying men, even whose in denial, don't hold grudges and dead people are easier to love; Jesse would have apologised whilst Joey still has smoke on his breath, but he prunes posies instead.

Rebecca is in the lemonade kitchen, pink shirt of his, blue jeans; the light filters through virgin summer skin. She looks like a goddess this city crumbled and wrote a thousand times anew. His very own personal Aphrodite.

Eight years or so ago, Lake Tahoe lovers. She made him get up before the angels woke to look at amber dew crystallising on edges of the cascades. She wanted to show him the magic visions of her childhood. But when they arrived, kissward, cloud curtains were still to part and the day hadn't yet made its debut. They shivered against each other deliciously; he touched her lips, she bit his finger harder than she'd meant to.

"If there was a god, he'd smoke cigars and have a pet turkey."

She laughed, "sure."

He went over to the other side of the bridge to collect throwing stones for heaven, which had skittered from the soles of shoes. It came up behind him, his back was turned.

 _Jess, quick, look!_ Gold glitter, fairy wings melded into yellow. Wonderland fell away. "But it was beautiful," Becky whispered.

"Why didn't you just enjoy it?"

"I couldn't enjoy it without you."

Jesse held her and felt cotton tears on his shoulder. He loved Rebecca Donaldson, adored her so much he wanted to scream it into the face of whatever god or higher power existed, but the quiet rushing of water was already enough. _You should have known it wouldn't last, babe._

He'd meant the sunrise.

So he looks at her now; a little older, eyes dimmed by crying through his glassy gaze, and he feels exactly the same. He sees himself, rolls of life in camera reels as if he were a character on some cheesy sitcom. Say he was: cool-uncle-jesse archetype, this would have been wrapped up as a medical mistake with nice twenty-two minute ribbon, credits and canned laughter roll. Come back for next week's episode – Jesse and Joey take Amsterdam. The more he thinks about it, the pleasanter a two dimensional life becomes in his swimming soul; tune in, tune out, go to Hollywood Heaven only when things are nicely finished or too soon and people can miss you, lying in a D-Rated dumpster, dreams of young writers joining you until your body is electrified for reruns. _Yes_ , Jesse says to himself, _you do get more romantic when you're dying_. This would never make it to TV, okay, maybe ABC.

"Love you, Beck."

Becky, crushed raspberry seeds on her lip, smiles over the top of the refrigerator door, "I love you too, sweetheart," and slams it before going outside to Joey.

* * *

"I'm going to the store, do you want anything? We're out of milk."

He's knocking his slippered heels too hard against the patio brickwork, doesn't even make a tune. But Joey smiles, not up to his eyes and shakes his head, "doc called, I've got to go in see them in a bit."

Rebecca sits down carefully, looking through the doors behind them to check has Jesse fallen back to asleep before putting her arm around Joey, "don't worry about a thing, I can pick the girls up from the airport."

There is a beat where he doesn't say anything, silence loaded with a thousand words, his hand just slowly slides into hers – _bet I'm just not eating enough spinach, that's all [half-hearted Popeye impression] –_ squeeze, "I'll get them on my way back, just make sure his majesty is up."

She kisses his cheek, "okay."

"Hey, get some ice cream?"

And leaves shuddering and bird tweeting in her wake, and how desperately Joey wants to tell her how scared he is. He's not a saint; he is so goddamn scared. He knows this demon now, they're enemies; got His report on file, the best in the business can't get Him to stop sucking blood like a leech and fucking His victims from behind. If He can break down Jesse Katsopolis, He'd beat Joey Gladstone to a pulp.

* * *

When Jesse opens his eyes, he's riding that morphine high; sun shinning, flowers smiling, cornrows on the kitchen curtains morphing into rhymes. It feels like the first time he's ever seen a summer, or at least for a long time, in such vivid blues and orange drops. They must have upped his dose; Judas and Judy never tell him, their preferred methods of communication nowadays are looks and whispers – sometimes they'll go out, the two of them, and come back with blotchy cheeks from tears, or curl in bed together like kittens. Maybe they don't know that he knows how this is affecting them, how difficult _this_ is, he knows that it's easier for them to pretend. Everyone does a lot of that; Becky's worried sick about Joey being sick and Jesse's at the end of his chemical rope, ready to hand it to him.

 _No, no, can't think like that._

He's thinking of Pam a lot these days, she's here with him, but he doesn't tell the others; she loved Joey and she would love Becky too, sometimes she says things and it's like Pam put them in her mouth. Funny really. Pam's there with him, she holds his hand when Becky shoots him up with the latest chemist coke, sleeps in his bed – negative time space and unsaid words between them – but when he goes to put his arms around her, she disappears.

He'd been scared at first; of course he had, been scared of spirit seeking sister, because then she was still slightly see through with an open head wound, blood in her eyes. Back home, she was always looking so fucking different. Just before they moved over, the three of them - and they were all staying at Becky's – she was older, like him; wrists strong enough to be caught, looked like she'd just come out of Belsen, black and purple splotches on her face.

She'd followed him endlessly in imperfect movements, tethered more to his pain than her persistence. It took a while, six months, for her to arrive in the land of childhood holidays. Jesse had guessed that she'd drowned somewhere around Biscay Bay and found peace finally. She resurfaced how he remembered her best: laughing, laughing, golden. And yet untouchable, mute as if she doesn't speak this new Hermesian language of high days and hospitals, stuck between timelines. He understands better each day how she's made of angel wings when he stirs and cannot feel his own weight on the pillowed mattress; one hundred and five pounds of baggy clothes and powered meals. If ever he stares at himself in the mirror, she stands on the side of his good eye and smiles, and he looks almost human in the glow.

Without her, he stretches his limp limbs and pulls his beanie over his head (the peach is getting faded, must order another one chez Madam Donaldson's, yellow). He never used to wear such bright colours because they made him look washed out and he was prone to being young and vain and stupid. Joey says he's still the same, could spend a little less time on the hair he has left. Jesse says he's being an ass and he's not, and then Becky quotes something that sounds like Shakespeare.

Jesse wishes they could have some fun again, like when he and Joey had their own place and they'd have 'dinner' parties, Becky sitting on his left and Joey on his right until everyone'd forget about the food and get up to dance – sing, play the tambourine, drink. It was the best time of his life and for a good four years, Jesse forgot he had a label tied to his big toe. Now Joey has developed a practically comical complex about tending his tulips or whatever the hell's in their garden, and Becky's writing herself into her next new life as a novelist or studying this country's ancient tongue so she can fully explain to the family Katsopolis the condition of Heavenly Hermes.

He moves – before the morgue can start putting bricks around him – opens the window wide like in a Disney movie, leans out like Cinderella. Joey's squatted over a flowerbed, this greets Jesse with a have-mercy-gleeful grin and he beckons him to come inside, not waiting to waltz into the kitchen as though he knows where anything is. Grabs the butter box and coffee filters from the refrigerator in a whirl, still spinning when Ranger Joe comes in, washing his hands with a shake of his head.

"What's up with you, what's all this?"

"Sun's shining, my girls are coming," Jesse's words lap over in an excited tone that strikes the other man as particularly Stephanian as he's eyed up, "I'm in _luuurve_ – what's wrong with that?"

Joey finds himself grinning, "nothing, nothing at all," but then the sentence crumbles around his own sensibilities, "I just – let me do that."

Jesse dodges his approach – _no, no, no, Uncle Jesse's pancakes are the best_ – "and you're going to breakfast like a king, capisce?" And then realising it was milk Becky was going out to buy, he slows, smiles sheepishly. Joey's gazing him in a way that gives his eyes an almond quality, Jesse reaches over for him, turning on the CD player.

"Oh, Jess, not this one."

"Makes me think about home," pulls him closer because of it and says, "come on, dance with me," as if Joey has a choice.

They move slowly to guitar strings, can't really call it dancing, but light hits the tiles like a disco ball. They'd had a real one in their living room, in their apartment in their Bay Area together years and they'd done this often. Joey wants to cry, bites his tongue, "it's a long time since it's been like this, you and me."

"Shouldn't have gotten Becky to move over here with us then," it's a joke but sadness does not escape it.

He rests his forehead on Jesse's clammy one, drinking in the blue eyes that only seem to get brighter no matter how much he's starting to fade, _she said she'd like to meet a boy who looks like Elvis_ , he echoes the line, looking at his own Elvisite, "I love you very much."

"I know."

"Do you love me?"

"Of course I love you," Jesse whispers with earth-shaking, heart-breaking tenderness. He captures his lips, kisses Joey until there's no doubt, no doubt anywhere, savouring his flavour - imprinting. Could have spent his whole life with him, being the opening act for his comedy set, at home sweet in the morning and curried in the evening, that kind of love, but those words stick to the corner of his mouth, "gosh darn it, I love you."

Familiar footfalls on the gravel timed with the change of songs, is enough to send Jesse back into his manic morning, he runs to the front door (leaves Joey stumbling back), shouting, "yo, Priscilla, haul that milk on in here – we're making pancakes."

Becky's laughing because Jesse clamouring at her before she even steps over the threshold where a song about her home state skips scratched, "this is a pleasant surprise," she says between batting his hands away and passing the milk to Joey so she can get to the freezer.

"Yeah," Jesse - suddenly on the offensive - can play judge, jury and executioner when it suits him, "and you nearly missed it."

She rolls the jab off with her eyes, "went through the tourist district, didn't think – anyway," finishes washes her hands, jostles Joey gently towards the breakfast bar, spreads out a piece of paper which had been crumpled in her pocket, "I was walking past a club and I saw this."

 _Comics wanted – every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday._

 _English speakers preferred._

"Joseph, it's perfect," Jesse cries, features aglow with a thousand strobe lights, and thrusts the phone at his partner, "call them right now."

Joey's face, on the other hand, goes a flushed grey at the prospect, "I don't know, I haven't been on stage since –"

Jesse is all but shaking him by now, "October 1st 1996 – all the more reason," he turns to his ally who's already sieving ingredients into a bowl as a frontier, "you tell him, Beck."

"I think you should go for it, honey," she agrees, seals the deal with a floury pat on the back, "but not while you're still in your pyjamas."

* * *

The sky meets sea with a summery ease; she prefers seeing these limitless things through neat confines, like time with all its hours and seconds encased within a watch because – as Joey slides the doors open in front of her – the lucid blue gushes like a swimming pool to her feet and there's a brief second (panic in her chest, at the doctor whose purple English is limited to phases with no real meaning – a waiting game, a matter of time; she'd like to tick off the minutes they have left, at how everything could change on the turn of a dime) where she wants to let it drown her.

But Becky looks. Becky swallows the feeling because she is needed. Jesse slumps into a chair, asks for a cushion for his tailbone and Joey disappears inside again. She worries the tray of food and orange juice on her hip before, too aware suddenly of its lopsided weight (the absence of glasses, she shouts back for some), putting it on the table and stretching out her arms, a theatrical gesture to catch the patient's drugged-up gaze, "boy, look, Jess, what a –"

"Don't say it's a fine morning or I'll shoot ya," Joey says and Jesse smiles wanly, as he is hoisted up and his cheek is kissed, as he always does at the John Wayne quotes he doesn't get.

It is on Jesse's insistence that the trio have a brunch of pancakes and ice cream sundaes on the piazza. By the time they actually got round to preparing it, he had lost interest, preferring to nap instead but still takes all the credit, and they just laugh it off because he's so happy and watch in astonishment as he uncharacteristically eats three quarters of the spread. Becky goes to say something but Joey holds her back; hasn't consumed anything apart from banana milkshakes in three weeks, so this must mean their mutual lover is feeling better, and Joey is not prone to feeling hopeful.

Jesse listens above his chewing to their mundane conversation, talking about road closures and around Joey's appointment that he's seen the card for with his specialist's name printed on it, and watches him push his pancakes to side of his plate (where they can lie uneaten and obscured by Becky's plastic plant and Jesse's lack of sight) and sip his coffee with a shaky hand. He wishes his sister were here to hold his hand through what he is planning to say but she never comes out in the sunshine because it extenuates her lack of shadows.

He takes a big spoonful of sundae. Joey looks almost amused at his erotic encounter with a piece of silverware; vanilla melting around his cupid's bow, chocolate sauce seeping into every crevice of his angry gums and making Jesse look, in the shifting mood, like a leper with no teeth. Becky is flicking through the paper for her latest article so she can get hung up on typos and syntax for the rest of the day. Joey watches Jesse, and Jesse stares back through his lashes, says suddenly, "so, I spoke to my cousin, Dmitri the other day," and even Becky glances up from the rise of BSE at this; Jesse avoids contact with his family just as much as they hate any mention of Joey.

"He's going to send some papers over, I'm setting up trust funds for the girls and Danny will need to be trustee on Stephanie and Michelle's until they're twenty-one." This was not the whole reason he called Dmitri, it was just an after thought; he really wanted to make his will watertight so that no-one – Becky, his parents, the state – could argue against Joey being beneficiary; neither of them has much anymore, a couple of dimes and locked up funds, and he wants to make sure that the love of his life will be alright. Becky will be married three months after Jesse dies at most, she will want for nothing.

But it is she, the journalist, who speaks first, "sweetheart," who sets her coffee cup down so that it will leave a brown ring around bin Laden's face, "you're talking like this the last time you'll see them," who appeals to Joey for support and finds none, "maybe if you weren't so hell bent on _dying_ , you'd actually –"

Jesse opens his mouth to shout because, despite (or due to) his frail body, the two of them are prone, more than ever, to great trashing arguments that leave Becky in tears, him weak for days, and Joey cleaning up smashed china and wiping sour milk off the walls: _he's just getting sicker, what can i do – she doesn't understand, man,_ he's the go-between, takes her hand, "actually, Beck, I think it's a pretty good idea."

"You're part of the problem, you encourage him," Becky snatches her hand away, gets up and starts piling the plates and bowls on top of each other, her voice is shrill and Joey jumps, wounded (Jesse hates her, hates her for doing that to him), the pain is quick and deep and she sighs, "I want you to live, is that so bad? Jesse, I'm your –"

The Wife Card – a cheap shot alluding to a cheap ceremony, with no flowers and Joey and Elena as witnesses. It is no more than a bit of paper; her name isn't even Rebecca Katsopolis on the dotted line, a formality so that if – by some miracle – Jesse lasted longer than five years, some one would be able to stay with him, but she likes to take her green card out from time to time. Today she is kind and keeps it tucked between the blue covers of her passport.

"Hey," Jesse says, red faced, his knuckles white against the table because fainting would really undermine his exasperation, "go, see if I care – we'd be alright, wouldn't we, Joseph, wouldn't we?" (Joey does not reply, drains his cup; the silence answers itself but Jesse is not ready to see that yet), "see? –" to Becky "– go back to your bible bashing beaver."

She blushes, goes into the kitchen to serialise her hands, "I'll have you know," her words trail away through the door into a sob, "David happens to be a very nice man."

Joey has moved to help Jesse settle back into his chair, he doesn't smile as he does it, pulling the peach beanie over Jesse's ears, "Becky, honey," he exclaims before turning to him, "we're very lucky to have her, you know."

"Ugh," he flops his head back melodramatically, "I've screwed everything up again."

"No, no, you haven't," it's soft, placating a child, "you haven't, come on now."

Yes, he would have made a great dad, Jesse tells himself, the boy who Joey drove to the hospital when Stephanie was born. Curls his fingers into Joey's T-shirt until he can see all his butterfly bones, "we were on a picnic – Pam made me come, _made_ me – and I, seventeen, kissed you in the back of Danny's _Volvo_."

Sometimes Joey laughs because it's easier than crying, because sometimes it feels as though Jesse – his Jesse, a little of Becky's Jesse – is already gone and it hurts most, grieving someone who is still alive, "you didn't kiss me, Jess, I think I'd remember."

He sighs as if bored by the whole thing, this whole charade of talking and breathing they compel him to do every day, "no, well, _no,_ " he shakes his head, clearing the false memory away, "I didn't but I meant to, I always _meant_ to, of course I didn't kiss you."

They sit there for a while; Joey crouched on the patio, holding his hand, Jesse sat on his throne with his purple shirt bellowing around him, "I'm going to talk to Becky about Dr Angelopoulos upping your medication, okay?"

He doesn't hear him, captivated by something else, far off in the sky, "Jojo, look," stretching a single bony finger out to show him the moon with the sunlight reflected behind it, "see that? When I was a kid, my mom told me that's where angels sit to look down on earth."

Joey's grandmother used to say that if you saw it, you'd be dead in seven days.

In college, he read that Hermes – son of Zeus and Maia – was a protector of travellers and would guide deceased souls into the Underworld. He stares at his very own dying Mercury, squeezes his thumb and knows, whatever they tell him today, that he will be okay.

"That's lovely, buddy."

He will be okay.

* * *

Jesse changes the CD, Becky shoots him up – there are apologises read in between his track lines – and Joey washes the dishes. The songs have plenty of saxophone; and it could be any other Thursday, they've have one hundred and fifty seven of them, but today is weighed by the anticipation of company, hesitation because none of them is really sure whether the Bay Area Tanners will (or should) fit into their home; their laughter and bounding feet could tear the foundations down.

Jesse hums the song he, ill advisedly, spent last night recording and makes his way arduously in Joey's room. He only listens to things with heads these days; portis, talking, radio. Occasionally, when he is feeling a bit more optimistic, he'll listen to Ottis Reading, but rarely Elvis. The lyrics he's ruining his larynx to sing are only getting darker, ammunition aimed at one person in particular. Joey wouldn't be surprised if the album ended up being called _Jerk Off, San Francisco!_ (it does; he and Becky will spend hours in a studio arguing over what to change it to, with Jesse's voice playing over the loud speaker on repeat).

Joey's eighteen and hung over when he first meets Jesse. It was the first Sunday of Freshman Year '76 to show up on square alarm clocks and be thrown across dorm rooms. A bright day to spur on teenagers to fry their own bacon and then answer the phone to worried mothers, eating it, triumphant. But Joey was on a ferry from Oakland, shading his eyes from the sun and throwing up over the side intermittently, not recalling how he got there because he probably drank enough to make anything seem like a good idea, doesn't know when and where Danny left.

As soon as he stumbled through the sea of smoking students outside Block B (was his room sixty-three or seventy?), he was grabbed by a pink ghost into it, blue eyes flashing at him angrily, "Joseph Alvin Gladstone, don't you ever ever ever ever ever do that to me ever again. Do you have any idea how worried I was about you, huh? Danny _and_ Jesse are out looking for you. You're lucky I didn't call your Ma!"

He blinked, upset in a shallow, over-tired sort of way that he made Pam's blushing bride quality disappear so quickly, it suited her more than the double barrelled name; too big to be contained in her petite frame, too bulky for a woman with such grace. He wondered hazily, if Danny hadn't got there first, if he could have loved her.

Manicured fingernails digging into his shoulder, Mrs Tanner-Katsopolis sighed, "I'm just so glad to see you, Joey," and jostled him towards the showers.

There's still hope, Becky says without fail every day, when the firsts outweigh the lasts.

He'd seen the ghoul of him before; from Katsopolis doorways and photographs, enough to glimpse the Grecian or gawky set of his jaw, masses of hair covering a rock and roll brain – like the teacher in _Charlie Brown_ cartoons, a presence just out of shot.

When Joey walked into his room – towel around his torso, damp hair curling against his temples – he wasn't surprised exactly to find a boy (because he still was a boy, beautiful in a childish sense) sat on his _Rocky and Bullwinkle_ blanket, tapping his fingers on the bedstead as though playing a piano. He knew it logically but Joey couldn't quite believe that _this_ was the teenager who made Pamela scream with her head in her hands, _ma's had it up to here with him, up here, they're packing him off to papouli's for summer vacation_ ; the enraged younger brother who broke three of Danny's ribs. Maybe the Mediterranean mellowed him out because, in his blue jeans and white tee, Jesse looked serene.

Joey came in in his half-nakedness and expected a stuttered apology, a stumbling exit but Jesse didn't move, only his spectacled gazes falls around Joey's middle (abs still hard and lean from the high school hockey team), and the freshmen had to bend his head to meet it, the slight redness on his cheeks. And in that moment, no longer than a second in '76 time, Older Joe can see in hindsight their whole history, but the one who stared back at him then didn't believe in soul mates.

"Man, you look _trashed_ ," thirteen year old, not-dying Jesse said.

His voice was unexpectedly soft (this could of course, along with the light he radiates, be a trick of memory) and as Joey tugged a sweatshirt over his head, his older self wants to push/pull them around the room; while they're this young – before he dropped a textbook there, before Jesse kissed him in the shadow of that yellow lamp. He wants him to say: _jesse katsopolis, you will be the love of my life, it'll be more perfect than anything you've ever imagined but please be patient with me._ But, in his proper timespace, Joey said, "hey, why don't you go see who Dan and Pam are bugging?" glancing down at his towel and watching Jesse's eyes become hooded with disappointment or embarrassment, and his lanky legs drag him out into the corridor.

It turned out they were talking to Jeff and Bonnie, his redhead girlfriend (using this term as loosely as their misconstrued relationship because, as Jeff pressed Joey up against the back wall of their fraternity building the other night, Bonnie had been across campus in the arms of another woman). Pam knew this because Bonnie had been her ride since Pre-K and Jesse – slumped with his hands in his pockets, trying to look like James Dean – didn't know it yet. Danny never cared because neither of them was his best friend or brother-in-law, and outside he walked with his new wife wrapped around his hips, leaving Joey and Jesse to trudge along, side by side, towards the student parking lot.

The hangover seemed to have cured Joey of his need to please people; in the silence, all he could think about is how the sun burned his retinas and how much nicer it is in bed with the TV set on.

"I thought this would stop, you know, after they got hitched," Jesse muttered beside him, "that's all those chick magazines are about, right?"

They passed the tennis courts. Two jocks were stripped down to tiny red shorts, they pant, close enough to be lovers. Joey caught Jesse staring over the safety net of his thick-rimmed frames but thought he was admiring the game rather than, like him, their physical forms. He replied, clearing the lust out of his throat, "you didn't have to be their look-out in high school."

Jesse scrunched up his face, tearing his eyes away from the athletes and to Joey, "you," a stage whisper, projected from his lips loud for the benefit of the couple in front, " _you_ don't have to share a bedroom wall with my sister."

Joey laughed and was elbowed in the ribs, "I made them go to Vegas so I wouldn't have to share bunk beds with Danny," and, under the bike shed, it was the first time Joey saw Jesse smile.

"Can I do your makeup like RuPaul today?" he asks now as they sit down in his bedroom, those characters just proofs of people, with Jesse's black and purple splotches magnified in the big mirror.

When they first appeared, six months into his diagnosis and one twenty-nine days of double J cohabitation, they could be covered by dime sized concealer pots from the dollar store – now it takes pans of makeup specially made for Broadway shows and forty minutes in the morning. In spite of themselves, Joey and Jesse enjoy this time; the soft caresses, being alone with the door closed allows them to drift in between any given year, exchanging conversation about memories like the kisses they should have had in the eighties. They flinch in unison, apart, if their low voices trip against something that could have changed everything, and Joey sinks his fingers into the white powder and Jesse closes his eyes obediently because tears would make his foundation streak.

The question is a calculated move because he knows Jesse will breathe, "Bullwinkle brain," as he did after that first smile, tight and slipping around the sides, and Joey will be able to add some charm to the garishly clean pallor of his cheeks with that small snippet of a long-gone boyhood. He is not a painter. He has no interest in colouring onto paper the soil and sea outside because the most beautiful thing he's ever seen is right in front of him, he is just conserving it; a little chapstick to paste over the deep cracks in his lips, the craters of cancer taking fifteen minutes to conceal but their omnipresent shadows, reminding them all that this makeup could last just as long as him.

Jesse turns down Joey's collar, he can't remember whether he used to do that – back in San Francisco – or not, if everything really is different or if everything just looks different in a foreign light. Joey's room smells the same; of old posters that curl and clean laundry. Becky knocked over a bottle of perfume in hers, blue glass and cold from when her grandmother pressed it into her palm and it is comforting, like being in a stranger's house, another world entirely. Jesse's room, along with the rest of the villa, smells like death. Death is something as simple as the eerie white patch on the wall where the paper has peeled away, the stillness of the parallel lines he sleeps in. Jesse turns down Joey's collar and says, "where are you going later?"

"Airport."

"Running away with your boyfriend?"

You have to capitalise it, Death, because it's so final and freeing in its ambiguity, you have to or you'd go insane. Joey and Jesse have become buddies with Death by now; they can taunt Him and pet His little black dog, but Becky still backs away at His name and holds up Yaya Gina's rosary. At this time each day, Joey bats Him away; the imported cosmetics throw Him off the scent for a few hours.

"I'm going to pick up the girls, Jess, you know that."

The morphine has opened up his eyes to let in more life as Jesse rolls them up and his lover's fingers start to pad underneath them, tilting his head ever so slightly into the touch, but suddenly they are filled with desolation. He looks at Joey as though _he_ is not there, as through _he_ is already dead, "why are you so teeth-gratingly monogamous," the flippant remark catches the air like a sob; Jesse does not cry anymore, hasn't done in years but he feels like a murderer being felt up by his victim. Joey is too old-fashioned for a gay man, if only he'd thought of sex like everyone else – freedom, a big fuck you to society – neither of them would have to root through pink mornings and grey afternoons, did he give it to him then? which one of their caresses held in its promise the kiss of Death?

If Jesse had been more like him, he would have dodged the bullet all together, Joey presses the thought down, until it gets lost in his disease and smiles with forced brightness, sitting back to admire his handiwork, "why go out and buy chicken if you've got caviar right at home?"

Jesse shifts in his chair to look at himself in the mirror, "if you're comparing me to little eggs, I must look pretty damn bad, huh?" and their cheeks press together as he traces the reflections of imperfections over his face, and Joey moves across the room to put the brushes and blusher palettes away before Jesse whispers, attempting to assassinate him whilst his back is to him, "remember the last time?"

He does. The last time, it was a Monday and they fucked with the ferocity of two high school boys just about to pick up their dates for senior prom. Carpet burn hard on the living room floor because it was ten in the morning and Jesse wanted to make sure he was alive. He screamed Joey's name, shuddered at his touch; it was all and everything, the feeling, as if they knew, deep down (as deep as they were inside each other), that this bittersweet tenderness would be the last time. Becky had left a message on the answering machine that something had come up and she wouldn't be able to come over that morning but she may pop in later (she didn't, they didn't see her for three days) and Jesse felt dejected because was ten years since Pam died and he thought that she'd forgotten. He showered and Joey got _McDonalds_ – four quarter pounders with cheese and two diet cokes – and they dripped grease and tears over mounds of photo albums.

Joey squeezes his eyes shut, slams the drawers closed, blocking out the Athenian sunshine, trying to remember how his body tasted. He tries and tries but it's useless, "you know, Jess, that was like ten thousand years ago – why don't we just concentrate on today for now, okay?" and upon hearing the creak of him getting up, Joey turns and rushes over to stop him falling.

Becky is wrong on the firsts score, firsts are worse than lasts most of the time; when Joey returned to their apartment and found Jesse sprawled across the kitchen floor, shivering on the tiles, unable to move, _i couldn't get to the phone, i couldn't get to the phone, i thought you'd never come home_ , but she's never really seen them; the first night Jesse was kept awake by voices and Joey had to pin him down on the bed against his own screaming, Becky was on a date.

Jesse lifts his heavy, lollipop head, "let's go somewhere, just you and me."

Joey receives the kiss on his cheek, closes his palm around Jesse's thin shoulder, "that's a great idea, honey, but I think you should have a nap first."

"You do?"

"Uh-huh."

Uncle Jesse has died again, they thought they had him this morning, maybe they should call and ask them to turn the plane around, maybe he should have listened to Becky, this wasn't a good idea.

* * *

It starts with the flowers. It always starts with things that don't seem to matter.

She thought they'd brighten up the kitchen – from behind her computer screen, five minutes ago, just a few of Joey's prize-winning peonies – but now they've been picked, primed and arranged in their only vase, they look pitiful. Peonies are supposed to save people from their fate.

Becky doesn't recall which particular plant Jesse's mother was inspecting when she told her would-be daughter-in-law that she knew her son was wasting away. Irene had left a voicemail that morning, it was a clear day in mid-May, asking her to meet her at the Botanical Garden. She held her hand like a child's all the way around Redwoods, until suddenly Mrs Katsopolis stopped by the kind of exotic flower Joey gushes over in magazines and said: _it's odd, isn't it, when something's so beautiful, you always imagine – you can't ever imagine it dying_. Becky doesn't know if Jesse told his parents he was sick, she's sure he must have done (or Danny did it for, that's more likely, out of spite), but somewhere in '95 he refused to see them and on that day – the tenth anniversary of her daughter's death – Irene begged the woman who was meant to fill that void somehow to take her only child away, far away to the other side world with _that boy_ if she had to.

Her own mother does not approve, even through Connie has tried to convince her many times that marriage is just so terribly passé. Mrs Donaldson writes and pleads for Darling Rebecca to please come home because one simply cannot write in the Christmas bulletin that Darling Rebecca is living in a European ménage à trois with her decrepit ex-fiancé and his homosexual beau. That she abandoned an apartment in the city, her engagement to a benevolent biblical man, her own TV show, pooling all her savings and moving seven thousand miles around the world to share beds, lives and facial wipes. Nedra rarely puts in the post-script nowadays that she never trusted that punk anyway. _it would be easier_ , he grumbles from his bed, _to omit darling rebecca from the kringle kindling altogether_ , each time an envelope marked Nebraska arrives.

Becky checks her emails, another unanswered one from Irene because – even for an accomplished journalist – there are too few words in the English language to find a kind way to tell a mother that her last baby is barely surviving, that Jesse is a ghost with blue running blood and no detectable T-cells, slowly becoming a memory. Every morning it's like she's greeting a new person in the milky glow, hair thin and cheeks hollow. She will write that the sun is shining and he still has the will he used to seduce her back home, sweet and persistent have mercy; not that only now he uses it to refuse glasses of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice from Yaya's garden and exercise his rights as a dying man.

If flowers are uncouth for the dead, they must be callous for the dying.

She sits at her desk that acts as a partition between the kitchen and the open space of the rest of the house; the sliding wall of Jesse's room has been closed, he and Joey nap behind it. Becky looks to her left, trying to shake off the odd sense of dislocation, down the hall; the other bedrooms and the living room, but there she resides – back to the front door and folded-up wheelchair – the concubine.

She is writing for _Athens News, The Times_ and Omaha's _Herald_ all on the back of favours from old friends, just to keep their heads above water, but Jesse probably won't even know who she is when he wakes up. Joey will be forced to say awkwardly: you know Becky, Jess, she's Danny's co-host on _Wake Up, San Francisco!_ Dr Angelopoulos has explained that sometimes, as cancer eats the brain, it can turn into dementia. Becky remembers dictating stories from the teleprompter in the _AM_ days, of AIDS patients being asked to get off aeroplanes, mothers rushing to their sons' hospital room for them to die in their arms. She remembers being angry but these were things that happened to other people; a distant cousin who suddenly developed leukaemia, didn't bother to go to his funeral but now she wonders.

Jesse always remembers her, always, but it hurts in those five seconds/minutes that he can forget 1992, late June, when he was sat beside her and they were lovers again. Snatching her pen every now and in the flow of her story, to write lyrics on the back on his hand. Occasionally she'd take it, lick and rub the smudged ink to leave stains on his dry skin. The hand cream she bought him that smelt of leather, wood and lemongrass. That late June when they were lovers.

She can feel his hands through his shirt still, the colour suiting her eyes more than his. He did have beautiful eyes (does, past present, tenses get confused thinking of him). God, those damned flowers. Becky writes, banging her fingers too hard on the keyboard, until the clock ticks around to two, and as she walks over to catch her article from the printer, she raps her knuckles against the bedroom door; Jesse is needing his medicine. Joey's appointment is at quarter to, such a busy afternoon ahead of them.

Joey presses his thumb into her shoulder lightly when he emerges and she is washing her hands, that small gesture of affection doesn't make the anger go away as it should, "anything I can do before I head off?"

She is so tired, she is so tired; the girls coming, the girls coming is a ridiculous charade of obligation but she is exhausted by waking up every day and willing, willing Jesse to be gone and hating herself for thinking like that, "no," then Becky sees him – folding up the pillow cases on the sideboard, eyes moist with sleep or sadness – and feels a stab of something indescribable (guilt? love? jealousy?) before going over and gently fixing his bangs with her fingertips, "you're sure you want to go on your own? I could call Aunt Elaine, or Elena's always –"

He smiles away all the fear in his face, "it'll be something and nothing," cups her cheek and presses a butterfly kiss into its healthy shimmer, "I'll be fine, really."

Jesse comes in and grumbles (because, of course, they have to love him but to love each other would be absolute treachery), "oh, am I interrupting something?" before pulling himself onto a breakfast stool so awkwardly that his forearms bow, and Becky is always worried that they'll break. When they don't, she says he needs some lunch; she'll make a milkshake. Jesse flails his arms indignantly at this, "I ate breakfast – didn't I? – Joey? – didn't I just eat breakfast?"

Joey is getting his coat out the closet in August, among monthly supplies of Jesse's medication and unpacked boxes, "it's lunchtime now, buddy, you should have some lunch."

"I have a life expectancy of five more minutes, does it matter?"

"Your nutrition matters one heck of a lot," the older man comes back into the kitchen and takes the box of powdered calories off the top shelf for her. He looks good; the sun having bleached his hair almost to white, a single streak of grey going through it, his younger face having been incipient of the lines and melancholy he has now, at forty-something, in this light, in Greece. He rests a hand (knuckles red raw from the gardens, nails bitten down to the wick) on the top of Jesse's head, attempting to glance at his watch casually, "I'm going to have to split; their flight comes in at three, so we should be back by five."

As he moves off, his lover grabs his sleeve, "wait, wait," voice scraping against the side of his throat painfully, "hold up – I love you," Jesse is as generous with endearments as he used to be with kisses because kind words cannot kill him. But today he's said it with such weight that every time, Joey has felt as though the air is coming apart, making room for him, like he's floating onto a different plane.

He grounds himself; he grins wickedly and takes off Jesse's woollen helmet, messing up his collection of combed-over clumps to hear him scream _watch the hair, h_ u _h?_ for old time's sake, "catch you later, Jess."

The front door bangs shut. Becky puts bananas in the blender and Jesse frowns back at his appearance in the toaster oven. It is so rarely just the two of them.

"So," the syllable is stretched out, deciding whether this is suitable topic of conversation and still making the wrong decision, "heard from your God-botherer lately?"

"He has a name, Jesse."

"Okay, _David_ ," he smacks his lips together testily, "how _is_ David?"

"He's fine, in fact," when she looks at Jesse over her shoulder, her face is pink, she feels a swell of pride unexpectedly, "he's just become a pastor."

"Ooh, big whoop – what has David got that I haven't, anyhow?"

Becky gives him an incredulous look and pours the milkshakes into tall glasses, "well, he hasn't got a Joey for starters," it comes out with an edge of bitterness, a half–joke, because she's pretty sure that Jesse would have preferred it if she stayed available, just in case. He never sees the bigger picture: that she's here with him, she is not back in San Francisco with David. It is him she loves unconditionally, more than he ever loved her, but Jesse can't ever see that.

He sways off the stool, down the hall and into the living room, where the carpet comes up to meet his face and he crumples with a practised ease. Despite what Becky thinks he thinks, David (Canadian, sandy hair, sweaters shipped from Scandinavia) is a pretty nice guy. But then it is impossible to dislike someone who is, by nature, completely insipid and inoffensive, and it's not as if Jesse hasn't tried. They met once, a Thanksgiving everyone's tried to forget: a combination Jesse's short-lived cocktail of medication and Becky's super special stuff was making him turn acutely green, and after David asked him very politely if it would be okay to pray for him, his predecessor promptly vomited on his shoes.

He's descent, sure, but Jesse… grimacing, dragging himself across the floor to rest against the couch… it's been decided, as it was even before they paths were aligned, that he has to leave her and he's okay with his mortality, but if he really has to, he would like the idea of Becky spending her life with someone else more if that someone was just _better._ A movie star. A major-league hockey player if the Canadian thing's really a plus point. The President.

"Sweetheart," she smirks, hands on her hips, "if you're planning on spending the rest of your life down there, I'm going to have to join you.""

The day before he dies, they will be lying side by side in his bed, her breath on his neck as she tells him about the sunset because he will be completely blind and he will whisper, "I really did want to marry you, you know? Those little place cards and the orange lilies, the whole shebang. God, I was so young and stupid and in love with you."

That day is not today. There's an Australian soap opera on TV and banana on their tongues as they talk about angels during the end-credits.

* * *

 **A/N:** Jeff is the same friend who was mentioned in previous chapters, whose boyfriend died. Just keep him in mind, please?

It kind of depressed me how long this thing is and how many typos there are - I'll fix that to try and make your reading experience a little easier. Thank you for doing so anyway, I really can't believe people are reading this. Shout out to IlluminatiGirl – you're the best, thank you for motivating me to keep on writing!


	5. 2000 (Part Two)

**A/N:** This chapter was hard to write. But it was an excuse to look through my old MKA books. Kind of weird setting something in a time that I can actually remember.

DJ is 23, Stephanie is 18 and Michelle is turning 14 in November. Her character is the only one I consciously 'tweaked' as her upbringing was a lot different than canon. Obviously.

Also I realised, 50k words in, that Joey and Jesse's birthdays are a year out; I thought they were born in 1957 and '62 respectively and if I changed them, things would get weird. So please don't beat me up, die-hard _Full House_ fans.

* * *

" _The Lord took all my hopes away_

 _I wish I could just stay in your arms_

 _one cable car Sunday_

 _because now all the songs are out of tune_

 _I'm so scared to take one last trip_

 _so far removed_

 _from everything we've been through_

 _one last trip_

 _no more cable cars to carry me_

 _to you..."_

 **Track 6 /** Cable Car Sunday

* * *

"Quit it, Steph."

The only place Joey doesn't have to think is in the 1976 puke green, _Chevy Chevette_ that he got for a roll of drachma and some clippings of his prize-winning dahlias. Five-door. Put his foot down on the long roads and squint at the signs in between alpha and omega. His very own personal tin can to haul him (sometimes Becky, rarely Jesse) from supermarket to seaside, hospital to pharmacy waiting rooms. The engine rattles and groans; its life expectancy no longer than Jesse's, will be sent for scrap metal before they fly back to San Francisco (just two) –

"Seriously, Stephanie, knock it off."

Of course today would be the day that its usual comforts escape him; the mix of soil and pharmaceutical wrappers in the leather upholstery unpleasant suddenly, that Alanis Morissette song he hates comes on the long wave, but Michelle – passenger side, knees knocking together nervously – already has her fingers on the dial to search through the static for another station.

"I swear to God, I feel like death."

Today there are three girls in this car – older and taller and _louder_ than memory would allow – and it scares the _shit_ out of him.

"DJ!"

A hotdog stand pops up – the familiar palm tree lined avenues of their neighbourhood look like they've been lifted from the pages of a California travel guide.

DJ and Stephanie's raised voices on the backseat grate against this cold feeling, all the ridges of his spine. Joey has been thrown minutes/days/months into the future; Jesse is dead but he hasn't joined him yet. Every second feels like an hour, still swallowing those green-cream pills Dr Angelopoulos gives him to balance the comedic chemicals in his brain because now he really _is_ depressed.

"'Chelle," he glances over at the youngest Tanner who hasn't said anything since she asked to stop at the gas station for a bottle of water, eyes fixed to the window, "could you pass your sister those candies in the glove box?" who smiles and passes the pink tube back.

"Thanks, Joey," Donna-Jo doesn't feel well; she is tired, she is _jetlagged_ and doesn't appreciate Stephanie stretching her legs over her lap.

The two of them only stopped arguing long enough to greet him at the airport. They'd looked right through him at first; his appointment ran longer than expected and he was late, out of breath in his winter coat when their eyes went big in recognition – DJ put her hand over her mouth, Michelle stayed silent, and Stephanie flung out her arms and hugged him too tight.

Joey hadn't expected them to be ecstatic to see him, sure, he hasn't really had much contact with them the last three years; no longer bonded to the Tanners by blood or at least acceptable association like Becky, but he imagined _DJ_ at least to put what her father has said aside, and look forward to seeing her uncle and the places her mother spent childhood holidays.

Instead she is attached to a yellow cell phone, waiting for her fiancé to call. Joey changes gear to turn into their road, wonders if Jesse is awake, whether Becky has managed to work her magic and revive him in time.

"You spoke to him when we stopped in Zurich," Stephanie is saying, "what's the big deal?"

Michelle has pulled the visor down and liberally applies pineapple lipgloss as her sisters continue to squabble.

"Just because I've had _Creamsavers_ last longer than any of your relationships."

Stephanie pulls out her earbuds indignantly, tinny rap music coming out of her personal jukebox.

Michelle twists around, out of her seatbelt, her shin nudging Joey's wrist as he puts the car into park. " _Stop_ ," her voice is shaky but firm, "we're here to see Uncle Jesse," and she sits back down with a smile as her sisters apologise.

They sit in the car staring up at the house for a good minute, waiting for Joey to give them the nod to get out, say something but he just can't think of the right words _to_ say. He should have prepared this, preparing them.

He and Becky have gotten used to Jesse's corroding beauty; they have – since his physical plateau – been able to see tiny cracks of health in his face after laughing, from lying in the sun too long chattering inanely about the _artistry_ of crazy paving as she reads to him from the newspaper or Joey does the gardening.

There is something so peaceful about him now but his nieces won't see that. They will see their dove grey Uncle J, think he's some distant relative, then blink again and see him clearly.

Joey shuts off the radio, "look, girls," Michelle might cry, plead with them to let her go back home, "I want to be honest with you here," Jesse will or will not recognise them, "your Uncle Jesse, he's not –"

"It's okay," DJ says with the coldness that will make her a good doctor, "we know he's dying, Joey"

Stephanie leans forward, snakes her arms around the headrest to hug Michelle.

He clears his throat and fixes his coat; he can still smell bleached corridors from the hospital floor, before slamming the car door behind him, "okay then."

Becky is in the porch, waving her arms through the standing heat. Shouts something that he (with his head in the trunk) doesn't hear, but makes DJ and Michelle jog up ahead, leaving Stephanie to help him get the bags out – _how rude._

He smiles.

She catches his elbow gently as if to wake him, as they trudge up the hill, "Uncle Jesse's pretty bad then, huh?"

"Just wanted to warn you."

The sun beats down on them; he ink will be slipping off the doctor's letter in his pocket, all incriminating evidence melted into black sludge at the bottom of the envelope.

"Well, thanks," she hugs him again, her eyes are a very watery blue, "I'm so glad to see you, Joey."

* * *

Uncle Jesse accepts visitors in his bed like an ancient queen, propped up by pillows and the bottle of morphine.

It's Stephanie who ventures into the lion's den first, who speaks with the brightness her sisters can't find, "wow," she makes a little motion with her head towards the medicine stuck to his side, "you must have some awesome parties."

The last time the girls saw their uncle, he had tears in his eyes.

A garage sale at Becky's, '97; Joey's cartoon paraphernalia that they had to reduce to just a few dimes by the end of the night, the prized Elvis guitar Stephanie bought for the right price. Michelle sold lemonade on the side of the road and made two hundred and twenty two dollars, hot summertime.

Grandma Irene had told them (as she had everyone) that Uncle Jesse had cancer. But that Fourth of July, he explained to his nieces that it was an AIDS related cancer. DJ walked around the block, processing the words her dad had bandied around in derogatory terms for years, and Becky followed her. Michelle stared into the bonfire, burnt her hotdog, said, _so you're never going to get better._

"The best, you want a try?"

Joey is putting the girls' cases away. Becky intercepts, gives the two of them a smirk in mock disapproval and plucks the sticky bottle out of Jesse's hand, "I think I'll be taking that, thank you."

After Jesse was inside and their shoulders had gotten moist from his cheek, Joey announced that they – the three of them – were moving to Greece, words drowned out by fireworks in a solemn way.

He has tears in his eyes now but he's smiling; pale skin stretched over his skull – as if someone ordered his teeth two sizes too big and crammed them into his jaw – touching their hair, wrists as they take turns wrapping their arms around him (Michelle stumbles; there is a third less Uncle Jesse than she remembered, DJ goes a distinct shade of green), just checking they're not their mother in three small, individual ghosts.

No one mentions the beanie he's wearing on a ninety-degree day, they fidget aroumd his lack of flesh and eyebrows.

He's smiling but Becky can see the way his eyes keep flicking towards the door, the spasm of pain that crosses his face, the disappointed quirk of his mouth.

"How about a picture?" she says.

"Jojo –" Jesse's features light up – the hurt Danny inflicted from thousands of miles away disappears in an instant – Joey crosses the room, tapping his fingers against his thigh, not wanting to be seen, "come be in the photo."

DJ excuses herself, runs into the bathroom. Joey mumbles, _sorry, buddy, got some stuff to do,_ goes outside with a flick of his wrist, overwaters the flowers

"It's so great you're here, it's amazing, isn't it, Beck? My girls – a doctor, a musician and an _eighth_ grader, while the sun's so young as well. Does it get any better than this?"

"No, it doesn't, Uncle Jesse," his youngest niece replies.

* * *

"Joey, honey, those poor roses –"

Becky surveys the scene: a half-smoked packet of _Lucky Stripes_ and an ashtray on the table, a hockey jersey on the chair, Joey's back to her.

"You're going to drown them."

When he first started smoking, Joey used to hide them at the back of an old magazine rack and the stubs in a plant pot. If the weather was really bad, stand on the toilet lid and blow smoke through a cardboard tube into the ceiling fan. His breath always smelt of peppermint, she liked that.

It was February, they were walking back from the store and there was a thunderstorm; they huddled in a café doorway until it passed. Neither of their cell phones was working. Joey finally cracked under the pressure and got his cigarettes out. But he kept getting them wet and his hands were _shaking_ and he looked like he was about to cry, so Becky had to light one for him.

She buried her face in his neck whenever lightening struck. He didn't tease her, as Jesse would have in the old days, about her childish fear of electric storms.

A couple walked past, asked in thick accents where the nearest hotel was. Becky replied in Greek, even though they were from Illinois maybe, or Indiana, because she didn't want them to strike up an awkward conversation.

Their voices made her homesick.

She missed Virginia Ave., suddenly, and Lombard St., David, springtime, her life ten hours behind.

Joey pulled her closer and smiled around his cigarette, "is there anything you _can't_ do?" tilted his head away.

There were never any storms in San Francisco.

Their garden is filled now with arguments far off from the tenement blocks, the girls' laughing in Jesse's room.

Joey turns around, "one of Jess' old girlfriends, she –" his eyes are rimmed with red.

Becky feels her stomach drop.

"Adrianne – she died, Stephanie told me – she _died_ , Beck."

They walked home that Sunday as the sun was going down – as Jesse was playing another game of Go Fish with his nurse – and Becky wondered whether it was a good time to bring up Joey's new vice. But then, juggling a bag of oranges, their arms wrapped tightly around each other and smoke from his third cigarette trailing behind them, he asked.

"Have you had the test done?"

Before she went to stay with her mom in Valentine – back in 1991, after Jesse's diagnosis – Becky spent three days stood next to the phone; cancelling all the wedding preparations, wanting to call her ex-fiancé, wanting _him_ to, to tell her it was a mistake. She found the number of an old college friend who went into AIDS work, who would keep it quiet in San Francisco. _Just one sharp scratch and it's all over._

She thinks of Joey, absurdly – as she had at that moment – with nerves that uncoil like spiders' legs, like a bug, "you don't know, we can't know –"

"They said it was cancer but," his voice is gravelly from the cigarette, makes it sound like it physically hurts to speak, "this beautiful girl, this _gorgeous_ girl and she's –"

Bugs live lives too short, twenty-four hours on his flowerbeds, gone in a blink of an eye. His hands are shaking again (they perpetually _shake_ nowadays). God, she hates herself for thinking of him like that.

Joey puts down his watering can, glancing from Becky to bedroom reflection of the glass, leads her over to the other end of the garden where he can sit down the patio unseen, "I can't tell him," without Jesse worrying because they know he worries, "how can I tell him?"

Becky folds herself onto his lap, looping her arms around his neck so he is forced to look at her – she thinks again of spiders' legs, "he probably wouldn't remember anyway."

It comes out harsher than she'd meant it, with an edge of sadness or spite perhaps. It makes Joey's breath hitch, she runs a hand through his hair apologetically.

She kissed him once, the night of the thunderstorm, stood at the bottom of their drive, light stretching out from inside. A breath of carcinogens and peppermint, chaste in every way but its intensity; not a mother soothing her child, not quite lovers either. It was the first time she'd considered that she might lose him.

He wouldn't die, she knew, like Jesse even if he was positive because there are amazing things they can do nowadays, but the long life he could lead wouldn't be tied to hers anymore.

"Joey," she closes her eyes, the same pain rising, he rests his chin on the top of her head,

They might get back to California and never speak again, say in the airport taxi, _let's keep in touch_ , like high school friends but don't. It was crippling, that thought, so she'd kissed him.

"What did the doctor –"

There is a cough.

Becky blinks, is met with that look of Danny's – the one she became accustomed to years ago, whenever she and Jesse were making out in the living room, the kitchen, his bedroom even.

DJ is standing a few feet away, "Uncle Jesse wants to open his presents in the living room," her words directed squarely at Becky, "he said to come get you."

Becky smiles back at her because of the memory, "sure, Deej," she stubs Joey's cigarette out on the paving stones in one swift movement, gets up, "just give us a sec."

She looks back, the moment has gone; Joey is pulling his hockey jersey over his head, talking about cutting back the climbing rose that's taken three years to grow.

* * *

It's inescapable, the hesitation of dead, dead or dying. Joey can't cross any threshold in the house without it.

It's his first thought in the morning and last at night. Even in dreams, he walks down a never-ending Castro St., past their apartment that's been boarded up, tapping clones on the shoulder but when they turn around it's never him, and Joey calls his name again and again until Becky shakes him awake.

"Hey," Jesse is still in bed, of course, not a stone cold corpse, "it's Big Joe Stud –" he's shining with a brightness he hasn't had since 1987 and Joey loves him desperately, in the most pathetic way possible, "did you call that club?"

Dr Angelopoulos kept folding papers on her desk, "Mr Gladstone," it was awkward, hours earlier, the two of them – her knuckles turning white around the edges of his thickening file and he didn't know where to look, " _Joey_ , may I call you that? We should come up with some pointers to help you think about the future."

His mind runs through a thousand different possibilities – he goes into the kitchen, braces himself against the sink, "no, not yet," – but each one ends the same.

"Doc, with all due respect," he said, staring at his hands, "I don't want a future without Jesse."

"Pot on a big ol' pot of joe, Joseph, I'm opening my presents."

"Just get through the day, Joey," Dr Angelopoulos touched his arm as he darted for the door, "then we'll concentrate on the hours if we have to."

So that is what Joey does. "It's not your birthday for another two weeks, buddy," he washes his hands, antiseptic seeping into all the little cuts and it hurts like a _bitch_ , making tears pool into his eyes even before Jesse raises an eyebrow, says deadpan:

"Not going to be around forever."

Joey wants to crawl under his comforter and filter the air through the holes in his ailing lungs, "Jess, I hate it when you talk like that."

The doctors will inflate them; sew them up until their needles are blunt. All options exhausted. Jesse will breathe a shuddering sigh of relief. Joey will say nothing and hold his hand, watching Becky arguing animatedly behind _Perspex_ glass.

Joey leans down to button up his cuffs so the sleeves don't open like flaps, so his nieces don't see his bones.

Jesse spots the tears on his throat, "I didn't mean it."

Joey will always say nothing and hold his hand because that's what he always has done; when DJ took her first steps at a family barbecue; in a club in 1984, singing _I Want to Break Free_ before Jesse snuck off to the bathroom with the guy behind him; those long nights in Danny's house when the girls were fighting or Jesse's date didn't show, and Joey had been there and squeezed his hand.

Jesse swings his legs over the side of the bed, his words come out as whispers as he stands, "look, I'm fine, see?" sways for a second, grabs onto Joey's shirt, "nothing to worry abo –" and falls back onto the blankets, taking the other man with him.

Joey half expects him to cry out in pain or laugh hysterically but Jesse just licks his lips like a cat that got the cream, eyes go wide, hooking a leg around Joey's hip, "I feel like I could go all night."

Joey feels his face flush, the faintest twitch of smile tugs at the corner of his mouth; Jesse's persistence is admirable if nothing else, "Jess, honey, I _love_ you," he reaches into his shirt and retrieves Jesse's icy hands before they can skim any further down his stomach, "but you're not getting any."

"Not even _one_ little kiss?"

Joey rolls his eyes and presses his lips to Jesse's knuckles – a tiny gesture, a turn of the century courtesy, but enough to appease him. Enough to make Joey's sinuses burn with an indignant rush of tears as Jesse begrudgingly allows himself to be pulled onto his feet.

Joey misses his smell, the fermented starchiness of his sweat, coming straight from his pores on a hot summer day with a hint of motor oil. Now he smells preternaturally clean, of soap and baby powder; his skin has that lingering odour of decomposition he first caught from the General Hospital's cancer ward, and he started losing weight again.

"What are you crying for?"

Joey's grandma used to say that tears can't fix anything that laughing can't.

As soon as they were sure Jesse wasn't going to go the way of so many others before him (suddenly, violently, on the street without warning), the inevitable became a dull ache that they grew used to.

They were going to go to Graceland together – their time a tight rota of married days and holidays – but Jesse got sick when they were on the way to board the plane to Tennessee, and doctors decided it was time to try chemo

Neither of them has cried in a long time, years, not like this – Jesse clinging to him, murmuring _oh, jojo, oh, sweetheart, no_ into his hair.

Becky slips into the room, sees Joey's tears or doesn't, "everything okay?"

Jesse slaps Joey on the chest, a feeble attempt to try and dislodge the sadness, "just a couple of queens –" smiling, pleading with him, "– huh, Joe?"

"The girls are waiting, let's move this party to the living room."

She reminds Joey of Pamela when they're helping Jesse down the hall, his arms over their shoulders, Becky does; the same maudlin beauty, the way her hair curls by the end of the day, falls over her face.

"You'll tell Danny for me, won't you, Beck, that I'm not up to walking Comet today?"

She shoots him a look over Jesse's bowed head that would be withering without its sadness.

* * *

For his thirty-seventh birthday, Jesse receives:

\- Stephanie's latest demo tape

\- Two family-sized bags of _Hershey's Kisses_ (Cookies and Cream, Original)

\- A crocheted blanket with no name on (that Becky knows immediately is from Irene because it smells like the bottle of perfume Jesse keeps in his sock drawer and he recoils at the touch of it)

\- A thick photo album with a commentary beside each photo, on brightly coloured paper and in black marker to make them easy read – Stephanie says that DJ did most of the work; she blushes.

Michelle and Jesse sit together on the couch, Stephanie and DJ are perched on the arms either side, pointing at photos, jogging their uncle's memory if he doesn't remember.

"There's us in Hawaii – oh my lanta, Steph, look at Dad with his clipboard of fun."

"Was that before or after he lost our boat?"

Becky reclines on Joey's prized _La-Z-Boy_ , laptop on her knees, typing up an article, adding in little titbits to the conversation where she can. Joey's in the kitchen, making dinner, and she can't help feeling a twinge of guilt.

It's always been there for as long as she can remember – before all this, before she knew, when she and Jesse first started dating – she saw the way Joey leant into Jesse's touch, the sombre set of his mouth whenever she came downstairs in the morning wearing clothes from the day before.

It was sitting in his seat beside Jesse at the dinner table, going to the movies on a Saturday afternoon, putting the girls to bed if Danny wasn't home, not in a romantic sense then. Now they're there again – the niggling feeling that she's taking Joey's place.

Jesse passes up Joey's super special lasagne to go for a nap instead and for once, no one argues with him.

They eat out on the piazza because the sun's still up; Joey wants Stephanie to tell him all about New York, Michelle regales him with tales from the pre-summer seventh grade.

Becky ropes DJ into helping her with the washing up because Donna Jo wants to know in hushed tones why Uncle Jesse is only taking his pain medication, why _exactly_ they're not doing any more than palliative care.

It's all very business like. They talk about how long Jesse's got, whether it's weeks or months; the options, their possible complications, what will happen when he dies. DJ makes sure there's a slither of space between their fingers as Becky passes her the cutlery; her replies were edged with hardness whenever Joey asked her a question over the breadbasket.

"You know, Deej, sometimes –" Becky starts on the plates, trying to find the right words, "when someone's dying, it's normal to feel sad or _angry…"_ but they trail off; maybe she's really put her foot in it, spoiled everything and now the rest of the week's going be even awkward than it already is.

There's a moment of silence, then: "Do you know about the day Mom died?"

Becky shakes her head.

"She was coming back from Grandma's, trying to get Uncle Jesse out the house, he was a complete bum, Becky –" DJ bites her lip, "Grandpa wanted to kick him out but Mom – she was trying to help him."

"DJ –"

"She didn't know that drunk was going to hit her, she didn't do anything _wrong_ and Uncle Jesse –"

Becky feels a hand reach into her ribcage and squeeze her heart because she knows what's coming; it shouldn't hurt but it does, "but your Uncle Jesse went out and did all those things, knowing he could get sick."

DJ nods, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand, eyes go glassy in the reflection of the microwave oven, "it's so unfair."

"Just because your Uncle Jesse made some bad decisions, doesn't make it _fair_ ," Becky pauses before her voice can get any higher, counts back mentally from ten because there's no point in getting aggravated, no point at all; she can sort of see DJ's logic in a way, "you've been eighteen, Deej – you think you're invincible, you think nothing can touch you. Back then they didn't really know –"

The sliding wall creaks as Jesse emerges from his bedroom, croaks out, "I want Joey," like a child.

Becky looks around him looking frail, at them as though he can't quite put his finger on who they are, passing strangers in the street giving him déjà vu. She smiles, "he's right there, honey."

"I don't know how you do it," DJ says as soon as her uncle's out of earshot, "if Steve cheated on me with another _woman_ , I could never –"

"Jesse never cheated on me, DJ."

"Emotionally, then."

She was angry, of course, in that late June of '92, as it dawned on her that there was something going on. More and more of Joey's things were moving into Jesse's room until the other bedroom was empty, her ex-fiancé asked her to ring the bell before coming in, the two of them touched with sly hands in the kitchenette, when she was lying on their couch, preparing for the show, pretending not to look.

She was angry – angry and upset and hurt and _worried_. She told Joey to be careful in no uncertain rhyme, one night as he drove her home, lights of the city speeding past, his cheeks going pink in the rear view mirror. The next morning Jesse refused to see her.

He showed up at her door a week later, brought her a pizza, complained half-heartedly about paying for the extra anchovies, screamed at her, accusing her of jealousy.

"What do you want from me, Beck, not be with nobody _ever_? You still can't believe it, can you, that I could love him more than I ever loved you?"

It was the one and only time he admitted it, would deny it profusely now if reminded, but she knows (deep down) that he'd meant it.

"Your Uncle Jesse's been in love with Joey since he was fifteen years old."

" _Yeah_ , but it's –" his niece nods towards him settling into Joey's lap outside, head drooped sleepily on his shoulder, listening to whatever Stephanie's saying, "it's not real, is it? I mean, you were _engaged._ "

"Jesse loved – _loves_ me but I could never compete with that."

DJ stops putting the cups away to look at her, really look at her for a second, "what makes you stay?"

They would have made it work, if this hadn't happened, she and Jesse, people do. They would have got married, bought a nice house just outside the city and had kids – it would have worked. She might never have known about his history with Joey, not in layman's terms anyway, might have noticed how their lips lingered a little too long under the mistletoe, found letters in the attic when they were old and grey and nothing mattered anymore.

"Because he needs me."

Joey's a good man, kind to a fault; would have moved to Vegas and settled into bachelorhood or with an old college friend. He's never made Jesse choose between them, and Becky thinks – in a strange, backward sort of a way – that maybe Jesse's illness gave them a chance that they wouldn't have had otherwise; given them _permission_ to be together.

Joey is at the centre of it all. She's just the moon in this arrangement, following the Earth; he is the sun that Jesse orbits.

"Joey, he's losing the love of his _life_ , Deej –"

There's the guilt, too (all she ever seems to feel lately is _guilt_ ), knowing that when the time comes, she will be alright. She will go back to San Francisco and pick her life up where she left off; filling in the _Wake Up!_ gaps and Jesse-shaped voids with other things. She will keep writing, and it will hurt – hurt like hell – but she will start building at life, a proper life, with David.

"You've got to understand that. He can't do it by himself."

Joey and Jesse haven't been apart for more than a day in thirteen years, can sit for hours in comfortable silence. The first thing Joey does every morning is run into Jesse's room and tell him how handsome he is, how much he loves him. Jesse still laughs at Joey's Popeye impression. They finish each other's sentences; Becky's certain that sometimes they can communicate just by looking into each other's eyes.

"The word _soulmate_ was made for people like them."

A beat.

"Mom would be so disappointed in me, Becky."

Becky takes off her rubber gloves, "hey now, you know that's not true," puts a hand on DJ's shoulder.

"She would," the younger woman pulls back, "Uncle Jesse's _dying_ and I just want to be at home with Steve," turns her face away so she doesn't have to look Becky in the eye when she finally says, "I'm just as bad as Dad."

"DJ, you're not," it comes out wrong, disingenuous where it was supposed to be sincere, "your dad and your Uncle Jesse can both be stubborn as mules at the best of times," she cajoles her into a loose hug, "but you have a whole week to show Jesse how much he means to you."

It's late now; the sun is just going down. Jesse's taken his beanie off to let Joey stroke his hair, more for _his_ comfort than his own, and Michelle's practically asleep. Stephanie pokes her head round the door to see if there's any more wine.

* * *

Some people aren't meant to be lovers.

Any good sitcom, for example, would have paired her off with Danny. It would have worked better in theory; widowed father of three gets promoted and falls in love with his new co-host, a wholesome girl from Valentine, one of those TV couples who send rates through the roof.

He might have had a brother-in-law for Becky to deflect her affections to for a few seasons to keep viewers on their toes; episodes full of mishaps and miscommunications that never happen in real life, but she and Danny – Mr Personality Man – would have been destined for each other, would have ended up together because they wouldn't have given him a brother-in-law named _Jesse_.

It sort of happened in the end, only not with her, her replacement when she moved to Athens. They married within six months, Nicky or Vicky or something (Becky can't remember), but she became the next Mrs D. Tanner.

Between the three of them, they couldn't decide whether they should send flowers. Jesse acted like it didn't bother him, tried really hard to seem indifferent, but when they settled on a card, he refused to sign it.

"Danny couldn't make it, huh," he murmurs as Becky is tearing the plastic wrap off of his syringes.

Joey is in the shower. DJ and Stephanie – under the strict conditions that they have a maximum of three drinks and a curfew of two – have gone out for the night. Michelle got a call from her dad and Jesse's eyes trailed after her as she went inside to answer it. Jesse Katsopolis can play the tough guy,

Becky's learnt over the years, the cold hearted snake but he's a really bad actor.

She rolls up his pyjama sleeve, the thermal one underneath, and tries to smile, "he wanted to, he's just so busy with the show."

Jesse puts a hand on her arm, gives an unconvincing shrug of his shoulders, not believing a syllable, and lets her shoot him up. "Would have been nice to see him."

He doesn't gloat about having the moral high ground now for all eternity, rant about how childish Danny can be. If he had, as she pressed a cotton pad to the crock of his elbow to stem the bleeding from one of his track lines, she would have reminded him of the time Mr Strowbridge made her the producer of _Wake Up, San Francisco!_ and Danny quit right off the bat because his ego was bruised, reassured Jesse that it's no reflection on him at all that his brother-in-law didn't show.

But that's all he says and it's a painful indication that Jesse isn't himself anymore.

Becky goes into the kitchen, closing the sliding wall behind her. Joey is perched on the edge her desk, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder, wrapped in a fluffy dressing gown, towelling his hair dry.

"Yeah, I will – okay –" he is saying, words hushed into the receiver, "thanks, Jeff – I will –" he spots her and scrambles as if he can't get off the phone fast enough, "yeah, bye now, buddy – buh-bye."

"That was Jeff?" she walks around the countertop to stand next to him, "how's he doing?"

Joey looks like a kid who's just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, licking the middles out of the _Oreos_ and sticking them back together, avoids the question, "your turn to pick the movie, partner," goes to move but she's wiping some shampoo off his face, fingers on his jaw absentmindedly or not.

"Oh, we don't have to do that tonight, honey."

"It's Thursday."

"I know, but –"

He covers her hand with his own, slides it down to rest against his chest, "Beck, it's _Thursday_."

They've developed traditions in this household, rituals that they stick to: Monday's dinner is always fried chicken, Becky or Joey (alternating) do the weekly grocery shopping on a Wednesday. Becky goes to Aunt Elaine's for coffee on a Sunday afternoon so the guys can have one of their married days. On Thursdays, she and Joey watch westerns; curl up on the couch once their patient is asleep, eat popcorn, drink lemonade and swoon simultaneously over John Wayne.

They're constants as things start to crumble and Hermes slips further into the underworld, a handful of northern stars.

It started in February. Jesse was complaining of black spots on his vision and he couldn't walk down the street anymore. It was the same time as Joey's smoking. She noticed the patio light on at 3am, the stack of t-shirts by his bed; he was sleeping beside her less and less because he started having night sweats – smoking just happened to be something he could do with his hands during those long nights spent outside, trying to cool down.

Becky keeps going back to that night, that thunderstorm, keeps going back to it. Exactly how he asked about the test, how he looked when she told him that yes, she'd had it, how he said: "I never got round to it; there was Jesse to look after, the girls, the business – I felt like if I knew, I _knew_ and I'd have to do something about it."

The first dinner of the week is still a Grecian, greasier imitation of _El Pollo Loco_ even though there's no Jesse at the table to eat it. She and Joey watch a dusty movie on a Thursday, interrupted at regular intervals by Joey checking on Jesse, just in case. He's always checking. Jesse is his life and that's why two weeks ago, he had the test done because the end's in sight.

Becky gives his hand a squeeze and picks up the tray of drinks. He goes to get changed.

As she's walking down the hall, Michelle comes out of her room in vertical-stripe pyjamas with her hands behind her back – "we've watching a movie, if you want to join us."

"No, thanks, Becky," Michelle smiles, "I'm tired – is it okay if I say goodnight to Uncle Jesse?"

"Sure."

She chooses the 1962 _Metrocolor_ epic, _How The West Was Won._ It's humdrum and drawn-out, the kind of movie they don't make anymore, but one of Joey's favourites because of Gregory Peck and the scenes from San Francisco.

It could be any other Thursday. Joey eats two thirds of the caramel corn and by the interlude, Becky's half-asleep and slipping down the couch, her head on his shoulder.

He reaches over her lap for the remote, pauses the video and laces his fingers with hers,"they're going to start my treatment as soon as I get home."

She sits up, swallows, "okay."

She was scared of losing him, that night in February, so she did the only thing she could think of that would bond them together – like a blood oath, physically, let him know that she was going to stick around – she kissed him.

It was an apology for her luck, for how much she tried to hate him when he told her about a young Jesse she had no idea existed; she wanted to blame him, maybe he broke something inside him, how little she thought of him. He was just Danny's goofball best friend, Jesse's business partner – she couldn't wrap her head around why Jesse (posterboy kind of beautiful, talented, could have anyone he wanted) would get so wrapped up in someone as painfully unremarkable as Joey Gladstone.

But then they were thrown together under unthinkable circumstances, with the same focus, and he would give her rides home, save articles he thought might interest her, remembered how she liked her coffee, and she fell in love with him too. Not the caustic kiss-me-quick way she once loved Jesse and has grown to love David but she became to understand why Jesse looked at Joey like he was the smartest, handsomest, funniest person in the world, hung on his every word.

"Jeff was recommending me some doctors, Dr Angelopolous said there's no point –"

" _All battles are fought by scared men who'd rather be some place else_ ," Becky smirks around the John Wayne quote, "only you've got something none of them have."

"A 1959 mint-condition Hanna Barbera Huckleberry Hound Yogi Bear?"

She purses her lips, " _that_ ," runs her thumb over his, "and me, you dope – you're stuck with me."

* * *

He hadn't been expecting to see her – this early at least – when she enters his room at 21:30. Pink dawns and twilight nights are her regular knocking hours, but then, Pamela always was infuriately unpredictable.

In Greece she's always been smiling but tonight she's changed again and stands, with the piety of a thirteen year old, as if she should have Theotokos laminated against her chest. She looks like she's folded herself inward, so much that her light has been smothered and she's just left with disgusting things that are only meant for humans, not for the likes of him or her; the yellow eyes of Juliet awakening in the tomb (Becky has made him watch that movie _way_ too many times), _Dairy Queen_ bones and blood that boils in the heat.

Jesse thinks (hopes, prays) – before she reaches and the whole thing falls away – that his sister's finally come to take him into the everlasting light, where he can fry chicken legs on the flames of Hell, what a neat idea.

She walks in eerie silence, comes closer.

"Pam."

"No," she touches him and he feels the warmth through her fingers, features fading right in front of him, "Uncle Jesse, it's _me_ – Michelle."

"Oh, Shorty," signature King Katsopolis smile, "where are DJ and Steph?"

"They went out."

She helps him sit up and climbs into bed beside him, the sheets pooled around a cardboard box she tells him to open. Neatly folded under masses of tissue paper and a Hallmark card, is a white dressing gown, complete with tacked on rhinestones and a label that reads _M.E.T_.

"You got an A for this, right?"

" _A+_."

Jesse uses the last of the energy that had seemed boundless twelve hours ago to throw it over his shoulders and wrap it around both of them; the kind of thing they did when she was little and he was festering inside, Uncle J and Superbaby, "you should consider about a career in fashion, young lady."

She gives him a forced, toothy grin and Jesse looks over at his dresser, plastered with all the postcards, letters, photos Michelle has sent him over the years.

"I'm sorry about Dad," she says.

He feels bad for her; with Danny working fifteen hours days, DJ engaged and Stephanie down on the East Coast trying to write hit songs in ten New York minutes, the tiniest Tanner has been left to rattle around that big house all by herself.

There's a kind of untapped sadness in her that he had when he was a teenager, and he wishes there was something he could say to make it go away. But she has the fierce independence of her mother, is old enough to pretend she doesn't need him.

"I'm sorry you had to move away because of him."

He wants to lie, say it wasn't that; that actually Athenian weather is better for him, but his niece is a smart kid and California isn't exactly known as the snowy state. She idolises Danny, all-American family guy, so Jesse can hardly tell her the vile things that were thrown back and froth between them, the fact that he hasn't spoken to his best friend or his brother-in-law decided to move in together, how many calls went unreturned, how many times Joey tried to make emends.

"I'm sorry you had to move away because of him."

He's always felt that him and Michelle have a special bond; their shared love of ice cream sundaes, the long midnight drives he took her on as a baby, trying to get her off to sleep with Elvis on repeat, their world famous talks.

The night Joey told him that he loved him, had done all along, it was Michelle – the baby – who Jesse turned to. He rocked her to sleep, singing _Can't Help Falling In Love_ again and again, hot tears in her hair, knowing Joey was lingering in the doorway. Michelle was the only person, apart from her mother, Jesse told about his feelings for Joey. She doesn't remember, of course, but her very first _dada_ was meant for him – him and Joey.

"When your mom died, God bless her soul," he whispers against her temple as Michelle tucks her head into the crock of his neck, "I was going to stay in Stephanie's room for a week and then go back to being a dish washer in Memphis."

"What happened?"

"You wouldn't go to sleep unless I sang you your special song. You taught me that actually everywhere you look, there's somebody who needs you."

Gunshots echo from the living room. "Dad doesn't give a damn about me, Uncle Jesse," Michelle toys with his cold hand, "all he cares about is Vicky and the show."

"Sweetheart, you know that's not true," Jesse pulls her closer, "your dad and I, over the years, we haven't always seen eye to eye but I know he loves you very much," offers her his best smile, "and you've got DJ and Stephanie, and Becky and your Uncle Joey think the world of you."

Michelle wipes her eyes with the back of her wrist, "but I'm going to miss you so much."

"Ah, I've got just the trick –" he unhooks his hand from hers and gets a CD out of his drawer, presses it into her palm, "if you ever get lonely, you can put this on and I'll be there for you, babe."

Michelle squints to read the label in the half-light, Becky's loopy cursive it says: _Michelle Smiling._

* * *

"Jess."

Joey stands in the darkness of Jesse's bedroom, waiting to see whether he's asleep, whether his name will boomerang back to him or not. If it doesn't, Joey will press his thumb to the papery throb of Jesse pulse, count the beats per minute on an old stopwatch of Colonel Gladstone's until he is satisfied that Jesse will make through the night or drifts off to sleep in the chair.

But it does. "Joseph."

"Why are you sat in the dark?"

"Used to it," the faint lump in the blankets mumbles, his words slurred, drugged up to the nines, "how was the movie?"

Joey pads across the room, letting in a thin panel of light from the kitchen, "like Elvis movies, all the same," crouches down by Jesse's bed, "came in to kiss you goodnight."

Then almost instantaneously, "hello –" Jesse flicks on his beside light.

Joey strokes back his hair and kisses his hairline, lets him tilt his head back against the pillows until Joey's lips are brushing against the bridge of his nose, the dry wick of his mouth.

They didn't kiss in the eighties because Joey was afraid and Jesse was too proud, after the first couple of times, to call him out, and then Pam died and they _couldn't._

It's too risky now to even share a sip of his drink; a cold that most people brush off in a week could land him in the hospital, the morgue. It's unjust, most of all, not being able to kiss him when they're living like this, have devoted their whole lives to each other.

"This is an early birthday present, okay?"

His mouth tastes of the powdered sweetness of his medicine. He smiles around the kiss as Joey tries to pull away but can't because Jesse's got his fingers on his collar, stealing extra rations, emits a low hum of disapproval when Joey finally manages to wiggle free.

"Two kisses in one day, lucky me," Jesse puts his hands on either side of Joey's face, holding him in place very gently, getting a good look at him – the guy all the love songs he's written since the age of fifteen have been about, his common law husband, the love of his life.

"May I just say, have _mercy._ "

* * *

 **A/N:** I've worried throughout this story that Becky doesn't come across well, idk? Just the epilogue to go. Thank you so much for reading.


	6. 2002 (Part One)

**A/N:** Set on 19th August 2002.

This was meant to be one chapter, again, but I got halfway and it felt too long. It might be because I ramble, I don't know. Probably.

Also I just realised that David shares his name with Dave Coulier which seems glaringly obviously to me now. But it was completely accidental whereas all the other OG characters in this were named after people who worked on Full House. Maybe it's bedded so deeply into my sub-conscious now that I don't even notice. Let's hope not.

I can't say this is a happy ending but no one was expecting one, right?

* * *

Waking _up begins with saying am and now._

That was the first line of a book DJ got him as a welcome home present. It was about a college professor whose lover had been killed in an accident; she speed-read it for a class and thought it would be cathartic, not the painful reminder of his own grief that it was.

A reminder that he has to wake up every day. She didn't finish the novel and didn't realise that the unwarranted widower, too, died on the last page.

The first twenty seconds of the day are the worst.

His fingers twitch around the pillow he must have grabbed onto in sleep. His nose itches. His eyes open, focus (after he's fumbled around for his glasses on the bedside cabinet, almost knocked over an empty glass) immediately on the photo frame: The Fabulous Ali Baba Hotel and Casino, Lake Tahoe, 1989 – he's aiming a gawky grin into Danny's camera, Becky's wearing that pretty dress she got compliments on all weekend, Jesse's leaning into her to get more of himself into the shot, his navy blue tuxedo, pink shirt.

That's always when Joey's muscles short out. His elbow buckles under his weight like the tendon's been slashed with a knife. He falls back against the headboard, eyes closed, breathes through the spasm of pain as it travels up his gut, heart, leaving the sick taste of realisation in his mouth.

It wasn't a bad dream. Joey can't shake it off or get out of bed and go tell him about because he's not here.

Jesse is not here. He hasn't just nipped into the bathroom, isn't in the kitchen, making pancakes for breakfast. Joey won't hear the faint hum of Delta blues downstairs, his footsteps in the hall.

Jesse has never been in this house because he is dead.

Waking up is always like the first time, as if it was only yesterday; coming round after passing out on the couch, Becky curled up next to him, sunlight steaming in onto his face, head heavy with something indescribable. He mistook it for a hangover until he went to check on Jesse and noticed the open blinds, his night meds on the dresser, his empty bed.

People say it's almost been two years, but for Joey, that's ninety-six weeks, six hundred and seventy-three days. Sixteen thousand one hundred and fifty-two hours without Jesse, each one having its own small but very precise ache.

It's the newness of the realisation that hurts most because he's never prepared for it, hits him square between eyes every time. Joey's got this nice place in Berkley. He's wearing pyjamas that Jesse has never touched, has listened to songs he's never heard, watched TV shows he'll never see.

Jesse is dead. Is dead.

His cell phone beeps. Joey groans and rolls over to look at it.

 **BECKY:** GOOD MORNING. C U 10 XXX

"Just get through the day, Joey," he says to himself as he swings his legs over the side of the bed, "just get through the day."

Jesse is dead and he is alone.

* * *

Danny Tanner wakes every day to a phone ringing in his ear.

It was what jolted him awake ninety-six weeks ago (he counts the days like a condemned man every morning as he brushes his teeth). A sinking feeling in his stomach, scaling the wall with his hand as he descended the stairs because he just _knew_ – in the same way you just _know_ things in dreams – before he picked up the receiver and heard DJ's teary voice.

"Uncle Jesse's dead," she said.

Michelle was leaning over the banister, watching her father's shoulders stiffen, the pain in his eyes that made her scream: _I hate you!_

The rest of the day is a blur, can't remember whether it was the day of the news broke or the next: Steve coming to pick Michelle up because she wanted to stay with them for a while and her dad didn't argue. Vicky was on a story in Chicago and he couldn't get hold of her. Stephanie directed all thirty-seven of his long-distance calls to voicemail.

His youngest daughter slammed the back door and he was alone.

The pink bunnies had been wallpapered over years before but there were still dust marks that always drove Danny mad, where Jesse's prized jukebox used to stand. But that day, he was glad to see them when he had disconnected the doorbell, switched off his cell and could sob.

"Are you going to go today?" Vicky asks him in the reflection of the mirror.

"No," muffled by his pillow.

She purses her lips, goes over to the dresser and starts combing her hair. Danny Tanner wakes every day to a phone ringing in his ear. His wife – sleeping beside him or squeezing into a skirt – says it's his guilty conscience.

"You are going to do _something_ today, aren't you, Danny?"

He notices the hint of exasperation in her voice but chooses not to pursue it; there's nothing more aggravating than an argument at eight in the morning that's cut off half way through by her going to work before he's had a chance to get his point across, leaving him stewing in front of public television all day, realigning her two Emmys on the mantelpiece that he can never get straight.

Danny sits up, finishes the water he took to bed the night before – "I thought I might defrost the chest freezer, there's probably stuff older than Michelle in there."

Vicky rolls her eyes but says nothing. Gets _Amande Sucrée_ on the corner of his mouth when she kisses him goodbye and rubs it off gently with her thumb, "well, you know how I feel about it."

He stays in bed five minutes longer, gets up as soon as he hears his wife close the back door behind her.

Michelle and Stephanie are asleep in their old rooms. He has to ball his hand up in his dressing gown to stop himself from knocking on his middle daughter's door, calling his brother-in-law's name like the old days.

It's been more than a decade since Jesse was on the other side of it to throw a pillow, shout: _go to hell, Daniel!_ It doesn't feel that long ago.

Danny stops to study the collage of family photos before going quietly downstairs.

"Morning, Pam," he whispers, "Happy Birthday, Jess."

* * *

Joey's dad was a military man.

Colonel Gladstone beat weakness out of his son at the age of five when their family rabbit died, taught him how to tie a tie and shine his shoes so he could see his face in them. The regime was supposed to railroad him into a life of subordination; going to WestPoint, making something of himself – a man who cheats on his wife and thinks nothing of it, hits his children if their lips quicker at the first sign of vulnerability.

When his mom finally got a divorce and moved them down to California, she took a job in _Disneylan_ d and Joey a middle school detour into comedy and homosexuality.

He went to see him, Colonel Gladstone, for Thanksgiving 2000 up in North Dakota with his third wife, Janice. Joey had been back on US soil a week and could already tell that he was getting under Becky and David's feet.

His mom must have told the colonel (at some point, somehow) about Jesse, that he was Joey's lover because his dad took him very seriously by the shoulders as soon as he put his bags down and said: "You don't have to be straight to be in the military, son, you just have to be able to shoot straight."

Or maybe he just heard the grief in his son's voice when he rang him for the first time in ten years, late on the Monday night, murmured into the receiver, "Dad, Jesse died."

It was nice smoking out on the veranda, drinking bourbon on the rocks and having father-son time they never had when Joey was growing up and really needed it. His father was small and frail and nursing the pancreatic cancer that no one knew he had but would kill him by Christmas.

Colonel Gladstone's a part of his son's day, now he's dead, where he never was before; Joey straightens his tie in the mirror, slips on his newly polished shoes and pushes down the wave of despair. He misses him, his dad. He wonders what he'd make of him. He would be proud, Joey knows that much; that he stuck by Jesse, saw him through to the end, strong enough for both of them.

Everything a man should be. Everything, ironically, that Colonel Gladstone himself never managed to be.

Once he's dressed, Joey makes his bed with hospital corners, sets his alarm and adjusts the Lake Tahoe photograph.

"Happy Birthday, buddy," he presses his fingers lightly to his lips and then to Jesse's face, "you don't look a day over thirty-seven."

* * *

Danny eats oatmeal every morning because he read somewhere that it's good for your blood pressure, and he's not exactly getting any younger or slimmer.

He could probably do it with his eyes closed: pour oats into bowl, add 80ml of watery non-fat milk and allow to it spin in the microwave for two and a half minutes.

But his heart jumps into his mouth in the last twenty seconds once he's put his coffee on, when the oatmeal bubbles and mutates. His heartbeat thuds in his ears as he waits to see if it will spill over the sides and get his microwave dirty.

He taps his fingers against the countertop. He thinks of that story he read to each of the girls when they were small about a pot that kept cooking until the entire village was engulfed in porridge and people had to eat their way out (what was the name of it?)

The microwave bleeps.

All the oatmeal is contained within the confines of the bowl.

It is fine. He is safe.

The OCD thing has definitely gotten worse since the show was cancelled and he was forced into early retirement. He stays up late dusting, can't go to sleep if he thinks a spoon has found its way into the fork section of the cutlery drawer. Checks that the burglar alarm has been set even though he _knows_ and his wife reassures him unsuccessfully that he did it before he went upstairs.

Vicky gave him an ultimatum six months ago: divorce or therapy, and Danny chose sitting on some woman's couch for an hour a week that costs $200 a session.

She's nice enough, the psychologist (about the same age as DJ, give or take a year, got her a PhD in England, nose pierced) but he always comes away feeling that he's disappointing her in some way.

Her mom watched _Wake Up!_ before school growing up, she let slip one day, and now he feels as though he should be more open, more screwed-up than he really is. Considers spinning lies about alcoholism, doing whippets back stage in his dressing room because he's just a bitter man with a middle-age spread and a cleaning addiction.

The girls are moving around upstairs (he should have put more coffee on; he is a bad father as well as a bad patient and husband). He gets out pecans and maple syrup for his oatmeal, turns on the radio as he sits down.

" _Don't forget, Joey Gladstone will be speaking at the Metropolitan Community Church at 12 O'clock today, launching an organisation we're very passionate about here at KFLH, The Jesse Katsopolis Kin –"_

Eating breakfast in silence for one day won't hurt.

Alex's teething toy is on top of the refrigerator. It keeps creeping into the periphery of his vision, taunting him. He will finish his breakfast first. It can be out of the toy box for five more minutes. It doesn't matter.

oey got it for him. His former best friend sees his grandson more often than he does, which bugs him more than the out-of-place toy. At least Joey wasn't there when Jesse Alexander Hale was born – there's some consolation in that – that he, her _father_ , was the one who drove Donna Jo to the hospital. But that doesn't mean that his first grandchild being named after Jesse rather than him doesn't hurt. A lot.

Danny is bitter, neurotic _and_ incredibly petty apparently.

He's seen Joey once in the almost two years he's been back in the country, at Alex's christening

They barely said more than _hello_ to each other the whole morning and Joey skipped the party afterwards, saying he didn't feel well. Danny made some snide remark about how the new godfather should really be there; maybe he wasn't up to the job.

DJ flipped out, told him to go.

Stephanie pulled him aside, plucked his third Old Fashioned out of his hand and explained that Joey had just started a new course of medication.

The thing was that Joey didn't look any different, apart from the undisguisable sadness about him that Danny couldn't put his finger, stood a few feet away from each other at the alter. Until the pastor wetted the baby's head, and Danny saw Joey's gaze lingering on the empty space to his left and Becky, on his right, squeezing his hand. Then he knew what it was – Joey thinking of Jesse exactly as he was thinking about Pam.

Danny wishes he had the chance to tell him that he understands, that he feels that very specific kind of heartache whenever there's a birthday, Christmas, sunny day – no matter how many years people tell you it's been, as if it should go away, as if you should stop missing their presence just because you love someone else because you never stop loving _them._ Has anyone ever told him that?

His breakfast bowl is empty and Danny can't even recall eating it. He gets up to clear it away. Michelle is coming down the stairs, carrying a big cardboard box.

"Hi, honey," he greets her with a forced brightness, "can I fix you some breakfast?" goes to help her with the decorations but she swiftly dodges his approach.

"Too busy."

"You don't even have time for a bagel? Michelle –"

"Sorry, Dad," her voice rails off behind her through the living room, "Uncle Joey needs this all set up by 11:30."

* * *

Joey pours himself a glass of orange juice and knocks back his latest cocktail of medication (the one that works). Sometimes he puts off taking it until Becky or DJ call round in the afternoon and shout at him, or taking all the pills at once – survivor's guilt, they call it.

At first he was only carrying on for Jesse; finishing the album, the book he'd been in the middle of reading to him, getting the help, Becky down the aisle safely.

He was never suicidal. He never actually lost his will to live and seriously considered throwing himself off the Bay Bridge. It was just a thought, a plan B in everything else went wrong and he'd have something to fall back on, there if he really wants it.

But now he has a life.

He buys three-litre boxes of wine from the bodega down the street. He dyes his hair and records reruns of _Perfect Strangers_ on his VCR. He still smokes, maybe drinks too much; has almost set his couch on fire once or twice. The excuse _yeah well the love of my life is dead_ has grown stale.

He's run out of bread.

He has a cat wrapping itself around his ankles as he moves to sit down at the table with a bowl of cereal. A black and white mongrel who started sleeping on his decking last summer and slowly inched her way inside until Joey found himself leaving the door open a crack, buying cat food, giving her a name – Woody, after her love of scratching his oak dresser.

 **DAVID:** KFLH NEXT ITEM JUST LEAVING

He feeds his breakfast to the garbage disposal because by the time he's finished replying, the _Lucky Charms_ have saturated in the milk, turning it an unappetising shade of blue. Woody jumps up onto the countertop and licks the empty bowl. Joey doesn't scold her, switching on the radio, catches the tail end of the link.

"… _be there if you can, folks, it's a great cause…"_ the disc jockey's cheery tones fade out around Jesse's piano intro. Cable Car Sunday, the track Joey listened to for nearly seventy-two hours straight the week Jesse died; to hear his voice, listen to the words he wrote for him, _I love you my life never leave me_ played over and over.

He has his cause and the second-grade class he subs for occasionally to live for; their drawings are plastered on his refrigerator. He puts the milk away, spots a tub of Alex's food at the back – behind the stack of two-minute meals – that expired three weeks ago.

He has a godchild – Jesse's great-nephew. Joey reads Alex _The Little Engine That Could_ in his best Elvis voice, sings him to sleep with the teddy bear song whenever he's babysitting. A kid who will grow up calling him Uncle Joey like Stephanie and Michelle have taken to (much to Danny chagrin, he's sure), who will know what a great man his uncle was.

The next track is a Queen record, on purpose or coincidentally – _Crazy Little Thing Called Love_ ; Jesse's favourite because of the obvious Elvis connotations. Its twangy guitar twists Joey's heart strings .

They were watching the news when they announced that Freddie Mercury, after years of suspicion, had AIDS. Jesse downed his beer, flicked through the channels and said: _he's going to die_ and when they woke up the next day and switched on the TV, he was dead.

Jesse died on a Sunday. Becky was having coffee with Aunt Elaine and Joey was in bed with him, listening to some of the songs from _Jerk Off, San Francisco!_ It was an unseasonably warm day in October, the afternoon. Jesse didn't say a word for the entire half an hour, even when Joey was telling him how great it was, which lyrics he liked best, how the sunlight was streaming in because all Jesse could see was darkness.

"I think this'll be our last married day, Joseph."

They released him from hospital a week before because there was nothing more they could do and Jesse didn't want to go into a hospice. At some point, he stopped drinking, only ingesting large doses of _Oramorph_ – it wasn't a surprise but Joey still didn't want to hear it, pressed his lips to Jesse's sweaty temple.

"For a while," he whispered back and he knows that Jesse understood.

He found his hand under the sheets, breathed out, "not too soon though, huh?" and those were the last words Jesse Katsopolis ever said.

Joey helped him lie back because he looked so tired, told Jesse he would check in on him in a bit but by the time he crossed the threshold into the kitchen, he was alone. 15:30 like his idol. The grandfather clock stopped. Joey went out onto the patio and chained three cigarettes. A Eurasian jay appeared at his feet, he wished he believed in reincarnation.

He has a gold band that Jesse give him for his birthday, twenty-four days before he passed away. Joey wears in right hand, fourth finger, upon Jesse's wishes, as Greek Orthodox religion dictates. He takes it off at night because he's worried it might fall off while he's asleep, roll under a floorboard and he'd never be able to find it again. He puts it in a little bowl in the hall with his keys and his father's stopwatch.

 **STEPH:** GOING TO SET EVERYTHING UP LUV U :)

When he slips it on in the morning, the heavy, familiar weight on his finger, he is ready to face the day. He feels like Joey again.

 **MICHELLE:** I LUV U MORE :) :)

He has plenty of things to live for.

* * *

"You're really not coming?" Stephanie asks him for what feels like the hundredth time as Danny tries to clean his way around the living room.

A father is allowed to have a favourite.

His is DJ; she appreciates the tranquillity of a clean house, she is a doctor, she has given him his first grandchild.

Michelle is his baby; last piece of her mother, easy-going.

"Really, Stephanie, I'm really not."

Stephanie is the one he worries about, has done since she was in the first grade and had a wedding in the backyard because she wasn't getting enough attention. She wanted to leave home and thought marrying that nice kid (Harry?) from down the street was the only way out.

Now she _has_ fled the nest and she's in _New York_ and it's a real possibility that she could be secretly married to middle-aged Venezuelan man who wanted a green card.

Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration but she only lasted a week in college before dropping out to become a waitress.

"Well," Vicky tried unhelpfully when DJ told them, "at least it's not at _Hooters_."

And then Jesse died and she quit her job to go to the funeral. "Dad, there are thousands of coffee shops in New York, I bet 85% of them'll be needing waitresses but I only had one Uncle Jesse."

Stephanie had the hardest time as it got around school that her uncle had AIDS. Michelle's class was too young to understand and DJ's was old enough to be sympathetic.

Stephanie was the one that got teased, had stuff thrown at her, bitchy tweens she even didn't know come up to her in study hall and ask if the rumour was true, if it meant she had AIDS too. She got suspended from school for three days because, in response, she asked a girl if she was really that fucking dumb. Danny thought that was a pretty reasonable response. The principle of Dimaggio Junior High did not

That's the thing that keeps him up at night the most, that she _is_ smart, and the problem with being smart, really intelligent – not in passing tests kind of way, in a your-brain-wont-shut-up way – is that it's impossible to be _happy._ DJ will settle with Steve, have more kids maybe, become comfortable in her job; she will be content.

It won't be so simple for Stephanie and her dad worries.

Danny filled that ubiquitous feeling of inadequacy, the knowledge that you are completely insignificant on a globe scale with cleaning when he realised that the world's problems can't be solved by news reports.

One day Stephanie will have the same epiphany about music. She might turn to gambling, drugs, suicide, _anything_ and there's nothing he can do because, as his wife keeps reminding him, she is an adult.

"Dad –" she puts her foot on the vacuum so he has no choice but to listen to her, her hand on her hip (Pam did that when she was angry, that little gesture; strange how he keeps seeing her more and more in their daughters the longer she's been dead, longer than they were married, knew each other even).

"Joey and I haven't been friends for ten years, I'm not going to be on the list of people he wants to see."

He hopes that will be enough to get her to drop it; there's a special on about The Wall Street Crash that he really wants to watch in a minute and he needs to finish this first.

It isn't. Stephanie leans down and pulls the vacuum out of the plug.

"Five –" she puts her hand up for emphasis "– minutes. Then you can take Alex to the park or something."

"Steph," Danny goes round to his daughter, "Alex is nine months old," closes his hand around her shoulder and takes the cord out her grasp with the other, "what am I going to do, put him on the monkey bars?"

It's a joke. Admittedly a lame joke but it _is_ a joke. She doesn't laugh.

Stephanie throws her arms above her head in exasperation instead, "fine – whatever –" to her sister coming out of the restroom, ready to go "– I tried, Michelle."

They don't say _bye_ as they leave. They pick up a thread of conversation, race each other down the steps.

He wants to call out after them. He feels like they've just walked out of his life for good.

* * *

"You're early."

Becky lets herself in while Joey's perched on the arm of the sofa, practising his speech.

"We caught all the lights."

She's managed to metamorphose seamlessly from nurse to wife, journalist to novelist; her hair is blonde, cut short and she wears those long gypsy skirts all the women seem to be wearing nowadays. One of those people who doesn't age. Maybe it's an innate grace kind of a thing rather than ethereal beauty.

She has a wedding ring on her left hand. The engagement ring that Jesse bought from a guy called Stu peeks out of the neck of her blouse as she leans forward to kiss Joey's cheek, lay a disapproving hand on his _Chip 'n' Dale_ tie.

"And I'm so glad because now you have time to change that _tie_."

She appreciates the white minimalism of his house. Joey misses kitsch. Jesse would laugh at what a gay cliché he's become; a spinster whose greatest pleasure is getting home to his cat and having an early night, who listens to old records and has been known to say, _things were better in the eighties._

"Beck," he gets up, "one of the few perks of being single is being able to wear whatever the heck I want," places a kiss on the top of her head, "don't take that away from me."

"Where on Earth did you get from anyway?"

"Jeff gave it to me the Christmas before last, I think."

Becky's eyes go soft, she touches the tie again, more affectionately than before, "oh."

She worries about him and Joey wishes she didn't.

She doesn't like him living in thirty-five minutes away, wanted him to stay closer but The City is too familiar. Berkeley is close enough to commute but a safe distance from all the places he used to go with Jesse, so he could start afresh, so the chances of bumping into Danny at the market – hands touching over the last tub of dishwasher tablets, making a scene in the middle of the produce aisle – are practically none.

It's not like he's completely out in the sticks; DJ and Steve live two blocks away. Joey goes for dinner there three nights a week, walks their Golden Retriever (Comet Jr.), looks after Alex if there's a doctor or podiatry thing going on. And it's not as if they never see each other anymore; he always pops into Becky and David's for breakfast on his way to work or for dinner on the way back. They still make time to watch a western on the first Thursday of every month.

It's just that he's not living in her spare room as he would be if she'd gotten her way.

His solitude bothers her much more than it does him anyway.

Joey goes over to the mirror, watches Becky in the reflection on the couch – she keeps tucking a stubborn strand of hair behind her ear, exposing the delicate wick of her earlobe. She has a perennial pinkness in her cheeks; her and David's marriage is sound and uneventful in the harmonious way marriages are. She is happy and she deserves it.

"You look great," she says.

He runs a hand through his hair, "it's not _that_ I'm worrying about," gestures towards the yellow record cards on the coffee table, "it's the speech – I was up half the night with it."

There's a lull of quiet as Becky looks them over, moving her mouth along with the words. The radio purls on in the kitchen; a country singer is being interviewed, their grating PR laugh crackles through the white noise occasionally, Joey thinks they might be from Tennessee.

"Beck, do you have to pace like that?" his head rushes as the _Xannax_ enters his bloodstream, he rests his forehead against the coolness of the glass, his heart rate picks up unhelpfully, "it's making me nervous."

She rests a hand on his shoulder, "it's _good_ , honey, really good."

"Really? You don't think it's too –" he turns round, can't find the words suddenly, his brain lagging a millisecond behind his mouth, "too –"

It's stage fright. He hasn't preformed in six years. When Jesse started to get really sick and their world became a tight circuit of the hospital, the 24/7 pharmacy they lived opposite and the kitchen table, there were only so many jokes he could make about AIDS and his boyfriend dying and him being okay about it. People are put off if you burst into tears in the middle of a set, if it suddenly hits you that everything is completely and utterly pointless.

"Listen, you're thinking about this way too much," her voice is soothing and a little patronising, "there's nobody who's going to be critiquing your speech, okay?"

She still wears the same perfume – it's one of the constant things he loves about her as well as the matrimonial glow. Neroli and jasmine that take him back to Athens, to happy times (Jesse smiling, laughing, lazy afternoons that seemed to stretch on forever).

She never had it on during their final weeks as a trio. As they took turns crashing on a futon on the floor of Jesse's hospital room, passing each other like strangers in the corridor at the change over, crying together if the nurses insisted that they both go home and rest.

"I don't want to lose him – _Becky_ ," Joey sobbed when they had to inflate Jesse's lungs and he was in so much pain that he couldn't even recognise him, for the first time, "I can't lose him."

"I know, I know," she slid down the kitchen wall to settle next to him, her head in his lap, hot tears seeping into the weave of his jeans, "but we have to carry on together, we have to."

They are stood in his house in Berkley. That is what they are doing.

* * *

Becky puts her other hand on his shoulder to stop his mind from wandering anymore, "what you've achieved is amazing. No one's going to be judging you," straightens his collar in a motherly way, "everyone's going to be there because they _love_ and support you, I promise."

The doorbell rings. It will be David, wondering where they're at, what's taking them so long.

"Jess would be so proud, Joey," she says on the threshold as she goes to answer it, her back to him, "you know that, right?"

And he does.

Danny knows he's in a bad place when a documentary about The Depression and chocolate cake before lunch can't cheer him up.

Pamela keeps cropping up on his train of thought.

He doesn't think about her enough these days but that's natural, isn't it? That song she loved has stopped being played on the radio, the pizza parlour he took her to on their first date went out of business in the early nineties and fell to the mighty wrath of _Starbucks._

All Danny has now is her dressing gown that he keeps tucked in with his winter clothes and boxes of home videos that he's always too tired to go up into the crawlspace and dig out.

Joey will always have _Heaven and Blues,_ Jesse's posthumous album that went platinum just as _Wake Up!_ was taken off the air. If he believed in that kind of thing, Danny would say that was karma.

To his face, at first, everyone was sympathetic – "thirteen years is a great run, look at Donnie and Marie, they didn't last two," countless friends/colleagues/viewers consoled him, "you went out on a high."

But then Rebecca appeared on _Good Morning America_ , _The View_ and all the reporters, catty women wanted to talk about was whether Mr Personality Man really was about Danny Tanner.

Did she know how he felt about it? – as Becky tried her best to steer the interview back towards AIDS, the foundation that 75% of the revenue was going into – what was he up to now? – she opened her mouth to speak, was interrupted – was she aware that cancelled talk show lost half off its audience when she left?

Being the good journalist that she is, she always gave them a pained smile, eyes flicking off camera to the producer, "I don't know about that," she replied.

Joey never did any of the promotion. The girls said it was because he didn't want to; he was still a complete mess. Vicky said it was probably a publicity thing; looks better if Rebecca Donaldson (beautiful, loved by millions) is the person people imagine the songs were written about, don't want to be labelled and only passed around certain circles.

Joey has that album, sure, but he was barely mentioned in Jesse's obituary. Danny still has it.

The TV is turned off; he knows what happens at the end anyway. He hunts around for Pam's red folder at the back of the bookcase, finds it and flicks to the back.

 _ **Hermes 'Jesse' Katsopolis**_

 _[his and Becky's engagement photo inserted]_

 _Passed away after a brave battle with cancer at his family's villa in Athens, Greece on Sunday afternoon with close friends by his side._

 _He has been reunited with his sister (Pamela) and father (Nick)_

 _He leaves behind his loving mother (Irene)._

 _His long-time girlfriend (Rebecca, pictured above) and business partner (Joely) will miss him greatly._

Danny gave the speech at Pam's funeral, got condolence cards and visitors because he lost his wife. Irene made sure, as they all knew she would, that any hint of Jesse's true self was erased.

He wishes he could tell Joey how sorry he is that he never took their relationship seriously when Jesse was alive. It was only when he was cutting out the obituary and finishing the last piece of Pamela's puzzle that it really clicked – when he lost his soulmate, he had a right to grieve. All Joey got was a misprint.

Pamela collected all the AIDS-related articles she could find. It seemed an irrational and morbid thing to do at the time because no one could have known that Jesse was sick but she was convinced. Her brother thought she was just nuts. Danny was sure she had last-onset baby blues and Joey distracted him with his latest material if he ever brought the subject up.

The first article appeared when they were staying up at his mom's lake house in Tacoma for DJ's birthday. DJ was out with Nick and Irene, stocking up on groceries. Danny had put Stephanie down for her nap and finally had Pam to himself for the first time all weekend, but she was engrossed in _The Times._

He padded across the living room, began kissing her neck.

She moaned. It echoes in his head; he is twenty years older, unemployed on a Monday morning but that sound, its breathiness echoes in his head.

Is it okay to think like this about a dead spouse? After all these years he still doesn't know. No one ever tells you. What about when you've remarried?

The paper flopped down in her lap – _February 6_ _th_ _1983._ She moaned again, craning her head to look him as his hand slid down the front of her blouse.

"I'm worried about Jess," she sighed after a moment.

There it was – little brother, love of her life.

" _Pamela_ ," Danny whispered, pleading, into her hair, "he's almost twenty."

"I know but –"

They hadn't made love anywhere apart from in their bed, at night in forever and he had seen a great chance for lazy Sunday sex but Pam wanted to talk about Jesse, of course she did.

Danny hopped over the back of the sofa, obliging husband, and sat down next to her, scanning the article.

 _AIDS: A NEW DISEASE'S DEADLY ODYSSEY_

He wasn't surprised when his brother-in-law matured and started going to bars. Experimenting, he told his late wife repeatedly – no, _he_ 'd never done it – was a normal thing for a man to go through. It didn't make him gay, Danny was sure he would find some nice midwestern girl and settle down.

"Jesse was a healthy attractive guy, he's fine."

Pam burrowed her face into his neck; he loved that, her blonde curls tucked under his chin, her body resting on his. It never feels the same when Vicky does it. "Remember that really bad flu he had?"

"When Steph was born?"

She rubbed at the inner corner of her eye with her knuckle, "hmm."

"That was a year ago."

"I know, but do you think –"

Danny tossed the paper aside, pulled her onto his lap. He can't recall what he said. He tries and tries every time he thinks back to that moment but can't – at what point in time did he stop being able to? How much more will he forget?

They didn't end up having sex because Joey showed up from Seattle, carrying a 12-pack of _Budweiser_ (he can remember the brand of beer but not what he said to his wife, how does that work?)

Joey asked where Jesse was and Pamela told him he wasn't coming. Danny made a remark about how he _was_ until he knew Joey was coming. It was a joke, but it could have been true. He's never been good at making jokes.

He's not homophobic like the girls say, he's really not.

He always had an inkling Joey was a bit of a pansy; if he had bought a guy home, Danny wouldn't have been surprised. He kind of thought in the first year of college, pre-Patty Fogerty, that that guy would be Jeff. Jesse never struck him as gay, it seemed like a waste, but Danny would have been fine with that too.

He really isn't homophobic.

His memory is bound to be fuzzy, that's what happens when you're on the wrong side of forty-five, and Danny's spent so many years since Jesse got sick, then died, casting his mind back to catch _something_ (looks, hushed conversations, awkward silences). Something that he should have noticed. Anything that would have given it away, their feelings, but he never can.

There's nothing.

They were really good at hiding it.

They could have done whatever they liked in their separate beds to whomever they liked – he couldn't have cared less about their individual sexualities. What bothered him was when they overlapped.

Joey swore blind during that final argument that they never did anything in his house, that they put all that aside for the sake of him, his girls. Danny didn't believe him because how could he; they'd managed to deceive him for so long, what difference did one more lie make?

The psychologist asked him the other day if he was jealous of Jesse and Joey.

Jealousy is what you feel when you see a threat (real or imagined) of someone taking something that is yours – maybe she'd know that if she was a bit older and not trying to hypothesise, whenever he brings it up, that he didn't want Joey to take Jesse away because Jesse reminded him of Pam.

It wasn't that. He wasn't jealous about Joey preferring to spend time with Jesse over him, not by the time it all came out anyway. He was angry because he felt betrayed.

His two best friends, the men who were supposed to be help him raise his kids and his wife, the love of his life kept him in the dark. No one told him. It's as childish as hell but it hurts that the three of them had a secret they didn't let him in on.

It would have been fine if Joey hadn't blurted out that Pamela knew so he thought _he_ knew and he didn't because guys don't really talk about that stuff.

It would have been fine but she never told him, ever, didn't even give a hint. Maybe she didn't trust him. Maybe he was a really bad husband and never, like Jesse and Joey's history, picked up on how unhappy she was.

Now she's dead and he can't ask her. Her voice has faded from his consciousness so he can't even think of what she _might_ say anymore.

No, he does have a vague idea; she'd probably hate him for pushing her little brother away, not making up with him before he died.

Becky did ask him to come visit them in Athens with the girls. She said Jesse would love to see him and he knew she meant it, but he couldn't face it – Joey, Jesse, being made to deal with the fact that he wasn't going to be around forever and there wasn't enough time to make things right.

It was easier, thousands of miles away, for Danny to kid himself that there was always time to call a truce if he wanted to, just wait another day, maybe Jesse would call.

But then DJ did and it was 5am and he'd run out of time.

Danny picked up the folder again around '94 or '95 out of duty, started adding clipping because that's when he started to struggle sitting with himself (no friends, dropping ratings, two daughters who can barely be in the same room as him), because he knew it was what his wife would want.

Pam can't hate him so he does it for her.

* * *

"We've got time for coffee and a doughnut, haven't we, Joseph?"

David's not a striking man by any means, could easily be passed in the street without a second thought. He's the complete opposite of Jesse in both his complexion and manner but there's something inexplicably _attractive_ about him. The particular habit he has of moving his hands in front of his face whenever he's explaining something, only using people's full first names.

He's bought powdered doughnuts that are as soft as his voice; the sugar sticks to his lips (red from his wife's lipstick) as he tells Joey about a hockey game that's on upstate next week that they should go to, and Becky makes the coffee.

His cell phone rings. He is, as all good pastors are, at the beck and call of his congregation but his mouth still quirks in uneasiness as he excuses himself very politely to go answer it. He always says, on the way back from the matches, that he's there if ever Joey needs to talk, day or night but he never does.

There's nothing to talk about; Jesse is dead and Joey is alive.

Becky puts their coffee down on the table, runs a finger down his jawline.

"What?"

She gives a little shake of her head, would be unnoticeable if they hadn't lived together for so long (would her husband see it?), sadness that's just there long enough for Joey to process it because then she spots the box next to the biscuit tin, lifts the lid to see what's inside – "you bought a cake for the party."

Damn. The party.

"I was planning on eating it with a fork," he rubs the back of his neck, "I just got _Boomerang_ and –"

She laughs because she thinks he's joking.

"Beck, would you be mad if –"

Her face freezes. "If you didn't come to the party?" her cup clinks against the countertop, "yes, I would."

Rebecca Donaldson is now a married woman who hosts parties.

Not like his mom in the early sixties when they were moving around every three months or so and she tried so hard to make friends with the other military wives – _too_ hard because this Mary or that Dorothy in whichever state never liked her.

Nights Joey recalls snippets of, that come flooding back with alarming vividness whenever he is offered a glass of Vermouth. But he rarely is these days because a. it's not 1963 anymore and b. he never goes to parties.

Becky hosts gathering and get-togethers with not an out-dated cocktail in sight.

The kind of thing that Jesse couldn't stand and not something you can manage on your own, so she never got the chance in San Francisco, first time round. Fills the apartment with people David can charm and she can schmooze; mostly agents and editors because she's trying to get her novel published (don't think about it, Joey tells himself, don't think about it, not now).

But today she _is_ hosting a party for Jesse's 40th birthday and Joey had pushed it out of his mind with great success until right about now.

The girls will be coming and the remaining Rippers. She asked him if she could invite some of his and Jesse's mutual friends. He told her most of them are dead, which is true really, apart from Jeff.

Joey doesn't know if Jeff _is_ coming; he's not the sort of guy who RSVP's (which always annoyed Danny, back in their college days) and both of them have casually avoided the topic at work for the past month. But he'll be there today and Becky _will_ bring it up.

"Joey, honey, you're coming to this party."

Becky's got this crazy idea that they (he and Jeff) should be more than friends.

Did he tell her once that they fooled around in their freshman year at SFSU? Maybe he did or maybe it would be something she'd try with any other gay, single friend he spends the majority of his time with.

He _knows_ he never told Jesse.

It wasn't a secret but it also never came up. They didn't do that thing some couples do where they write down all the names of people they've gotten intimate with because it never ends well for anyone without the extra weight. Jesse would have found it hard to count half the guys he'd been acquainted with, let alone name them, and Joey – out of compassion – would have added Jeff below Jesse, who was below Patty, even though they never actually had sex. Jesse would have either not cared less or cared _a lot._

There's always Jesse.

That's what Becky just doesn't get.

Jesse will never not be _there._

"You feel fine, don't you?" she asks, her voice a mix of annoyance and concern, worrying her lip between her teeth.

Joey gets up with his coffee, reaches over to get a packet of _Sweet'N Low_ out of the drawer, "well, actually –"

After Jesse died and Joey finally found a place to live which wasn't kind friends' alcoves, he had to relearn how go about his day without having someone to share everything with: watching TV without a running commentary of the characters' hairstyles and the glaring plotholes, choosing between orange juice or apple juice because he forgot which one he really liked and which he liked because Jesse liked it or bought out of habit.

Parties are something he'd prefer not go to alone – be that man who people feel sorry for by default, feel obliged to make awkward conversation with, who smokes outside when he's not doing impressions that no one gets anymore.

They were Double J for so long that Joey's only just remastered the art of being a singular unit, and he'd like to keep it that way for another forty, maybe fifty years.

She snatches his hands away as he's about to pour the sweetener into his drink (it is getting cold, the temperature outside is rising, they will have to leave soon) and covers them with her own, "please, Joe?" she gives him the big doe eyes that only ever worked on him if they were Jesse's or the girls' when they were little, "pretty please? As a personal favour?"

Nothing. Joey brings her fingers to his lips, a kiss of dismissal on the tip of her thumb.

"It'd make me really, _really_ happy."

She doesn't bring it out often, otherwise it would lose its effectiveness, but this regime works every time because she knows it makes him think about that charity bachelor auction she managed to rope them into; Jesse just after he got that awful mullet cut off courtesy of Mr Stephanie, in his tux –

 _Goddamn_ , Joey's going to end up going to the party.

It's definitely a foul move but she then did grow up with five brothers and sisters on a farm in Nebraska.

David comes back in, makes his apologises. They should really get going, cutting it fine.

Becky immediately folds herself into her husband's arms, seeking protection, as if Joey just hit her, "he doesn't want to come tonight."

"Rebecca, sweetheart," David eyes him with a knowing smirk over the top of her head, "you can't force the poor guy."

She pulls back, surprised by his disloyalty. Joey watches.

David curls a finger under Becky's chin so she can easily kiss him when he says, "but we _can_ bug him 'til he caves."

A feeling pokes around uncomfortably in Joey's gut, reminiscent of recesses spent being Pam and Danny's lookout in high school as they touched each other up behind the bleachers, and he sat on the pitch, picking at wet glass and being acutely aware of the fact that he was probably going to die a virgin.

Danny was convinced, the last time they spoke, that Joey fell for Jesse because he couldn't have Pamela, because it was _him_ she chose to sit next to in their first biology class of senior year. He couldn't be persuaded otherwise, that it might be possible that Joey loved her little brother for him, Jesse, rather than any misdirection of hetrosexual (in Mr Personality Man's own words) _real_ love.

Joey drains his coffee – it's that or the pre-show nerves creeping up on him again.

He's started missing Danny recently – it's weird. He didn't exactly give the impression at Alex's christening that Joey was a person he was pleased to see. Fixed him with a strange look all through the ceremony that Joey couldn't decipher, and it wasn't as if Alex would actually be aware of his absence, but his grandpa would, so Joey skipped the party afterwards because he didn't want to ruin the day for his ex-best friend.

He misses him but doesn't know the protocol of getting back in touch. Danny might not even want to, and it would be pathetic to ask DJ if her dad ever asks about him. The answer she'd bandy around is almost certainly _no_.

Joey can only remember vaguely Danny's first date after Pam died; he was going to go to a gallery or the theatre – something artsy anyway – with Stephanie's Honeybee leader (what was her name?) and the girls didn't want him to and he wanted to and then he didn't. Joey can't recall the ending, whether he did or didn't go, whether he was ready to start dating or not, and that's what Joey wants to ask him.

He's talked to Jeff about it, the moving on thing, and he's tried to help but Jeff and Tom settled together more out of friendship than anything else, because their chemistry was good. They still saw other people. Joey and Jesse had a _marriage_ – that's different. Danny is the only person who could possibly understand.

"Should we be heading off?"

They file out of the house. Becky is throwing David's car keys up in the air and catching them, throwing and catching again and again. He whispers something in her ear and she stops, giggles. They keep walking until Joey is stood in the porch, wondering whether he should bring a sweater along just in case the weather turns.

He reaches up to retrieve his emergency one from the coat rack. His fingers skim past and find leather – Jesse's beat-up biking jacket that Joey, Becky and Danny clubbed to get him for his twenty-sixth birthday. He was so proud of it that they had to force him to wear it out; they didn't spend all that money on something for him to look at. He looks ridiculous in it but Joey wears it sometimes around the house if it's really cold or he's just plain old sad, the latter most of the time.

A car engine is being started. His name is being called: _Joey! Jo-ey!_

Becky runs up the drive and into the house, "come _on_ , we're –" she sees what he's mesmerised by, and after a moment of silence loops an consoling arm over his shoulder, "come on, sweetheart, we don't want to be late."

* * *

 **DISCLAIMER:** While the Metropolitan Community Church is a real place in SF and amazing work with the gay community in the 80's, David is just some guy I made up.


End file.
